The paper describes the relationship between creativity and mood disorders. After outlining the main directions of research in this field, the nature of the ascertained correlation between creativity and mood disorders is analysed from a theoretical perspective. Psychological and biological approaches are taken into account. The first is focused on the significance of periods of mania and their influence on cognitive and motivational processes; the second is focused on genetic aspects. A compromise hypothesis based on both approaches is proposed and discussed, in which creativity and mood disorders, although co-determined by basic genetic factors are not independent and influence each other mutually.The psychology of individual differences places creativity at the crossroads of personality and intelligence (Aguilar-Alonso, 1996;Eysenck, 1995a). Both can be affected by disorders. Therefore, it would seem that deficiencies in the sphere of personality or intellect caused by psychological disorders would inhibit creative activity. An assumption of this kind might potentially be true, under one condition: that creativity is fostered only by those individual traits that are associated with good adaptation. However, in the light of philosophical reflections dating back to antiquity, and empirical studies which have been conducted for at least seventy years (for an example see Eysenck, 1994), this is not the case.In discussions on the relationship between creativity and psychological disorders Plato and Aristotle are often quoted. The first of them (see "Phaedrus", XXII, by Plato, IVth century BC/1993) emphasised the affinity of art and madness, and argued that art -treated as being born from divine madness (mania sui generis) -is superior to all kinds of academism. Plato also stressed the particular proximity of that madness to poetry. The second of them, Aristotle, linked melancholia (which means depression or at least dysthymia in modern psychology terms) with eminence in various domains, not only artistic, but also in philosophy and politics (cf. "Problemata"