Philoctetes (mythological character from the Greek tragedy by Sophocles): The creative personality is the one who uses art as a way of transcending trauma.

“Philoctetes is a mythological character from the Greek tragedy by Sophocles, a warrior who was on his way to the Trojan War when a serpent bit him. The smell of his wound was so noxious that he was left on the island of Lemnos and ostracized by his countrymen. When the war started, Cassandra, the seer, said that without the bow of Heracles, which is only possessed by Philoctetes and which he inherited from his father, the war could not be won. Many believe that it's the Trojan Horse that is the key to winning the war, but actually it's the bow of Heracles…

“The Philoctetes myth reappears in a book by Edmund Wilson called The Wound and the Bow: Seven Studies in Literature. Wilson modernizes the story, tying the wound to psychic trauma and the bow to the healing power of insight. And so the creative personality is the one who uses art as a way of transcending trauma” (1).

1. http://philoctetes.org/story_of_philoctetes/