First published over 30 years ago, this book rationalizes the psychological dislocation so characteristic of western creative thinking into a coherent theory of alienation, and defines those afflicted by it as a type: "the outsider". Through the works and lives of various artists - including Kafka, Camus, Hemingway, Hesse, Lawrence, Van Gogh, Shaw, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky - the psyche of "the outsider" is explored.