They need to observe, understand and then transform the experience of suffering into a more general understanding that can, in turn, help patients and their families deal with what has been dealt them. Even more important, however, it can derive great strength from the struggle to come to terms with such emotional extremes and from the attempt to derive from them some redemptive value. The milder manic states and their fiery energies would seem at first thought to be more obviously linked. The extreme pain of the deeper melancholies and the gentler more reflective and solitary sides of the milder ones can be extremely important in the creative process, however. Melancholy, on the other hand, tends to force a slower pace, cools the ardor, and puts into perspective the thoughts, observations, and feelings generated during more enthusiastic moments.
Mild depression can act as a ballast.
It can also serve a critical editorial role for work produced in more fevered states. Depression prunes and sculpts, it also ruminates and ponders and ultimately subdues and focuses thoughts. It allows structuring at a detailed level of the more expansive patterns woven during mania. The slightly melancholic perspective, of course, is meaningful in its own right. The sensitivity and compassion afforded by depression are for the most part entirely absent in the unbridled, self-assurance, and hectic pace of mania.