According to tradition, creative individuals must suffer beyond what ordinary
mortals endure on the assumption that suffering is essential to creativity. The
poet de Musset insisted: "Those who afford us our highest intellectual plea-
sures and our sweetest consolations appear doomed to weariness and melan-
choly." Some have held, as did the Goncourt brothers, that the suffering
caused by mental illness is the price one must pay for creativity. "Talent," the
Goncourts said, "exists only at the cost of our nervous condition." Manic‐
depression can give immense advantages to the creative person, but not when
the disorder is in its more intense phases.Then it not only causes suffering,
but the pathological behavior and the other problems it produces also tend to
reduce both the quantity and quality of creative work. These problems can be
mitigated or avoided if creative manic-depressives are spared the more
intense states of the disorder. Some creative manic-depressives could become
more productive were they to spend more of their lives within milder limits
of mania and depression.

Mild mania and depression are the best states for creativity because they
increase both the quantity of completed work and its quality. The American
molecular chemist Paul Saltman describes the enthusiasm and productive ener-
gy of mild mania: "I really feel terrific.I just run down to the laboratory in the
morning and just jump in. I just want to get as much done every day as we

-197-