Adam Chmielowski, known as Blessed Brother Albert (1845-1916), painter and later the founder of an order for the care of the homeless and the sick, suffered a mental crisis at the age of thirty-five and for this reason he stayed in the Psychiatric Hospital in Kulparków near Lviv. There is a widespread but unfounded belief in the medical community that he suffered from catatonic schizophrenia. This opinion was expressed and promoted by the late Professor Eugeniusz Brzezicki, a neurologist and psychiatrist from Krakow, in his work Schizophrenia paradoxal is-socialiter fausta (Folia Medica Cracoviensia, 1961). Meanwhile, the original case description of Adam Chmielowski's treatment in Kulparków was found in the Krakow archives. The case history leaves no doubt that at the turn of 1881 Adam Chmielowski suffered from depression, or melancholia, which is today called affective psychosis. In addition to the main symptoms, there were depressive delusions (punishment, guilt, humiliation, sinfulness, etc.). A detailed analysis of the recovered case, as well as an examination of Adam Chmielowski's personality, led to the clear exclusion of schizophrenia described by Professor Brzezicki. Adam Chmielowski's interpretation of melancholia was based on one of Antoni Kępiński's concepts, relating to the sphere of axiological psychiatry, which treats mental disorders as the result of a disruption of the order of valuation (axiological order), and therefore - above all - the moral order. The genesis of Chmielowski's depression is also related to the schizotymic structure of his personality. The experience of mental illness in the form of melancholia largely contributed to the spiritual transformation of Adam Chmielowski into Brother Albert. This fact indicates that some forms of mental depression can take a creative and socially beneficial course.