Outlooks of a tortured artist.

What exactly defines a tortured artist? Is it merely someone who tends to be over-dramatic on paper,and happens to appeal to the audience because of the tragedy within the pages? Or maybe it's someone who has been through so much,stories just explode out of them. Stereotypes define these artists as being mis-understood. But aren't we all? The only person in this world who fully understand you,is you. Since I know this,I couldn''t possible be a tortured artist,right? If someone were to ask me what a tortured artist was, I would say that it's someone who has seen the hard part of life,and learned to make a lesson out of it for others by writing their stories. But I suppose if that were the case,they wouldn't be called "tortured" artists. I'd like some comments on this.