Thread: Depression,necessery for success?

Most great scientists made their big discoveries after a long term depression.
So do u think a man cant achieve his full pontential unless he finds himself in such state?

Can you provide evidence to support this interesting claim. Specifically I should be interested of supporting material in the following cases.

James Clerk Maxwell
Charles Darwin
J. Tuzo Wilson
Sir Francis Crick
Neils Bohr

Thank you.

ThanatosX, i can give you a explination
You see most great scientists have one thing in common, they have somekinda psykological defect/error/abnormality. This makes them able to outside the normal box normal humans see in. But it makes them more vunreble to depressions and going mad

Originally Posted by ThanatosX

Most great scientists made their big discoveries after a long term depression.
So do u think a man cant achieve his full pontential unless he finds himself in such state?

You wrote, "made their big discoveries after a long term depression". So, I fail to see how you came to the conclusion that depression would be beneficial. It seems depression rather kept them from making those discoveries.

Originally Posted by Trurl

Originally Posted by ThanatosX

Most great scientists made their big discoveries after a long term depression.
So do u think a man cant achieve his full pontential unless he finds himself in such state?

You wrote, "made their big discoveries after a long term depression". So, I fail to see how you came to the conclusion that depression would be beneficial. It seems depression rather kept them from making those discoveries.

i think thats the whole point of it, they pushed themselves to get out of the depression and do something important. if they never had a depressed phase would they have still done the things they did?