A Beautiful Mind By Dr. Emil Kraepelin

In the movie A Beautiful Mind, which primarily takes place in the 1950s, John Nash exhibits signs of schizophrenia. He shows both positive and negative signs of the disorder. However, the movie does not portray all symptoms of schizophrenia accurately. Throughout Nash’s life-long battle with his illness, his family is dramatically affected. Overall, the movie implements a positive stigma of the disorder. While John Nash’s journey with his illness is not an entirely accurate depiction, the movie gives a positive light and awareness to schizophrenia.

Dr. Emile Krapelin, a German physician, was one of the first to separate mental disorders into different categories. “Dementia praecox” was the term Krapelin used for those patients who had some of the same symptoms that we now use to describe schizophrenia. Many people had described the basic concept of “madness” for hundreds, even thousands of years, however, Krapelin was the first to distinguish Schizophrenia as a distinguished mental disorder in the year 1887. He also was the first to distinguish between mental disorders such as Schizophrenia and depression. “Dementia praecox” was believed to be a “disease of the brain” meaning literally “early dementia.”

The command center of the human body can be described as the most organized, and most chaotic place known. It's focus could transfer from emotional thoughts to life-saving commands within a matter of seconds. Though this intellectual masterpiece is possessed by every human, it is rarely acknowledged. In An Alchemy of Mind, Diane Ackerman interprets this seemingly supernatural organ. She goes in depth with spectacular use of figurative language, and reveals some of the most amazing aspects of an object so vital to existence. Ackerman uses metaphors and paradoxes to examine the nature of the brain.

Dan Hoeweler a schizophrenic poet writes in his poem “Blast off to Insanity”, “They say I am mad/ that I am evil/ and creepy/ that my genes are corrupted/ and my brain is deformed/ that my actions are freaky/ that my behavior is not the norm…” Dementia Praecox: a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of contact with the environment, by noticeable deterioration of functioning in everyday life, and by disintegration of one’s personality. What we know as schizophrenia today has been around for at least two centuries, but not named until the early 1900’s by Kraepelin. In order to fully understand this disease you need to know the types and symptoms, the causes, and the treatment and recovery.

Originally termed ‘dementia praecox’ or dementia of early life, Schizophrenia was first identified by Dr. Emile Kraepelin in 1887 and thought to only occur in younger people and lead to mental deterioration. However, Dr. Bleuler believed that the

A Beautiful Mind illustrates many of the topics relating to psychological disorders. The main character of the film, John Nash, is a brilliant mathematician who suffers from symptoms of Schizophrenia. His symptoms include paranoid delusions, grandiosity, and disturbed perceptions. The disease disrupts his social relationships, his studies, and his work. The more stressful his life becomes the more his mind is not able to distinguish between reality and fantasy.

Emile Kraepelin. Dr. Kraepelin was a German psychiatrist who is the first to believe that psychiatric diseases are caused from genetics. Dr. Kraepelin also believed that schizophrenia occurs in intervals. Dementia Praecox was later renamed Schizophrenia by Eugen Bleuler in 1911. There are so many types of Schizophrenia’s that they do not classify each anymore they just classify it by certain symptoms in an article on http://schizophrenia.com.

Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe mental disorder that affects how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. does it have an effect on long term memory? Most people with schizophrenia are diagnosed in their early 20s, however the biggest symptoms such as hallucinations and delusions usually start between ages 16 and 30. (National Institute of Mental Health)

Schizophrenia is one of the oldest mental illnesses known to man. There are accounts of the illness dating back to the stone age. In the 19th century Dr. Emil Kraepelin coined the term Dementia Praecox, dementia meaning slow, or mentally challenged, and praecox meaning young, because he thought this illness only happened in young people usually in their late teens and early twenties. It was seen as “the terminal cancer of the mind.” Jung’s mentor, Dr. Eugene Bleuler found this theory to be incorrect as patients with Dementia Praecox to be neither stupid or always young, and did not always go though the three stages of diagnosis required in Dementia Praecox: depression, paranoid, hebephrenic by which he concluded the illness was not a dementia. In 1911 Bleuler published a book Dementia

The disorder continued to mystify and Sigmund Freud believe it was a result of unconscious conflicts from ones childhood (Burton, 2012). Tertiary syphilis was often thought to be the cause of the psychotic symptoms of the disorder as they both share many of the same symptoms, but this was found to have infectious agents which gave thought to there being more than one factor in the reasoning behind the diagnosing aspect. The first to differentiate Schizophrenia from other issues was Emil Kraepelin. In 1887 he termed the disorder “dementia praecox” or dementia of the young, as he believed this was an illness of the brain like dementia but instead of

“To some extent insanity is a form of conformity; people are always selling the idea that people who have mental illness are suffering. But it’s really not so simple…I think mental illness or madness can be an escape also” (qtd. in “John Forbes Nash”). To many “normal” people, the terms “insanity” or “madness” portray a negative connotation-- the unfortunate ones “suffer” from mental illness. However, brilliant mathematician and Nobel laureate John Forbes Nash, who has paranoid schizophrenia, cherishes his unique condition as a means of retreat from the brutalities of reality (“John Forbes Nash”). Since ancient times, people have observed the link between madness and creative genius. Indeed, research has proven that the two conditions of

The general theory of psychosis has been present for thousands of years. There have been written forms of documentation on this disorder dating back to the time before Christ. Schizophrenia did not become categorized as a specific disorder of the mind until the year 1887. Emile Kraepelin who was a German physician was given credit for the disorder. He was the first man to differentiate between the psychological ailments dementia praecox and severe depression. The word schizophrenia is over a hundred and twenty years old. The disorder was initially labeled as dementia paecox. This author/physician of schizophrenia initially deemed this disorder a disease of the mind and more specifically a method of dementia. He utilized the term dementia praecox,

“A Beautiful mind” is a story based on the life of John Forbes Nash, who is a famous mathematician. Unfortunately, he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia that majorly affects his personal and social life. Schizophrenia is a psychological disorder in which the patient’s ability to function is impaired by severely distorted beliefs, perceptions, and thought processes (Hockenbury, 2010).

The movie A Beautiful Mind is one that offers psychologists with a lot of fodder to think about and its storyline brings out various aspects of psychology that can be analyzed to bring a more conclusive close to this debate. The thesis statement of this essay is that psychological disorders need to be understood independently of various factors such as biological and environmental factors. This is because the world of psychology has always tried to attach the above factors to various psychological disorders but I strongly feel that psychological disorders need to be understood and analyzed independently so as a true and deeper understanding of these disorders comes to the fore. The movie A Beautiful Mind is about a genius mathematician Nash who has a psychological disorder, which is later diagnosed to be paranoid schizophrenia. The effects of this disorder are evident in the movie and the essay tries to see how the need to study psychological disorders independently could be helpful in helping various examples of cases such as that of John Forbes Nash.

A Beautiful Mind is a film loosely based on the life of John Forbes Nash, Jr. John is a brilliant young man who attends Princeton University and is bound and determined to formulate a truly original idea and make a name for himself. However, John succumbs to the overwhelming pressure he puts on himself, like many college students who fear failure do. His identity, when his symptoms begin to materialize, as a student and a young man obsessed with success echoes the article Suicide on Campus and the Pressure of Perfection (Scelfo, nytimes.com). Also, his struggles are not over after his diagnosis of schizophrenia. John is forced to muddle through his life with excessive medication before issues at home prompt him into taking a more radical approach, in terms of modern standards, to his mental illness. Radical approaches have been documented to work for some people, such as in the article Living With Voices (Luhrmann, theamericanscholar.org). This movie provides a glimpse into the life of a person coming to terms with their mental illness and, even though the release date of the film was 2001 and John first struggled with schizophrenia in the 1950s, current articles express the same sentiments years later.