The most successful people in life are merely those who can best mask their neuroses.

TV shows such as Monk and best selling novels like Toni Jordan's 2008 release Addition have exposed a niche of great potential: the phobic anti-hero. Think Rambo with an aversion to enemies positioned on his right. Or Die Hard's Jon McClane with a need to turn every light switch on four times before blowing the baddies sky-high.

Not all neurotics are masterminds, but many masterminds are neurotic. As Dylan Thomas once observed: "The borderline of insanity is more difficult to trace than the majority of people, comparatively safe within the barriers of their own common sense, can realise."

Entrepreneurial aviator Howard Hughes was a chronic neurotic, as too was Abraham Lincoln. Famous neurotic scribes include Shakespeare, Byron, Shelley, Poe and Oscar Wilde (check out www.neuroticpoets.com for many more).

"The good writing of any age has always been a product of someone's neurosis," critic William Styron once said.

Marlon Brando, a supremely neurotic man, once said: "All acting is the expression of a neurotic impulse. The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis." Speaking of which, Sigmund Freud deemed his own peculiar set of neuroses as positively essential to his effectiveness as a psychologist.

Extreme neurosis is often mistaken for psychosis, as was the case towards the end of Howard Hughes' life when he imagined being attacked by legions of flies. But they are very different animals, albeit trapped within the same mental zoo. United States website The Vanity Experiment explained the difference: "What's the difference between a psychotic and a neurotic? Well, a psychotic thinks 2 + 2 = 5, whereas a neurotic knows that 2 + 2 = 4 but it makes him mad."

I love comedienne Rita Rudner's explanation even better: "Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them. My mother cleans them."

Garden-variety neurosis is everywhere. For me, it's under my feet. I have a chronic fear of cigarette butts. I can't stand at a bus stop if there is a butt within 1m my foot. I have abandoned picnics because I can't find a sufficiently butt-free patch of grass.

Once I would never have admitted to such an illogical and borderline mental neurosis, but I'm comforted by the fact that I'm not alone. In the US for example, where mental health statistics are most frequently collated, psychiatrists estimate that only one million people of the nation's 300 million could be classified as "normal" ie with no anxieties, no fears, no strong prejudices and no vices.

Nervousness afflicts 133 million people; 2.5 million people (including the nation's most dynamic and successful men and women) can be classified as severely, though curably, neurotic.

Yep, neurotic is the new black, folks. Nutty is normal. Scream it from the rooftops: I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to fake it anymore!"

* Carrie is a journalist, author and mother who one day hopes to finish a cup of coffee while it's still hot.