As the story unfolds, Nash is able to work through his illness to (in his words) "matter" in the world. This film is essentially a story of how a brilliant man was able to live with the vicissitudes of a debilitating mental illness to attain a true sense of accomplishment, or some would say, even a sense of greatness. Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. At the beginning of the film, John Nash arrives as a new graduate student at Princeton University. He is a recipient of the prestigious Carnegie Prize for mathematics. He meets his roommate Charles, a literature student, who soon becomes his best friend. He also meets a group of other promising math and science graduate students, Martin Hansen, Sol, and Bender, with whom …show more content…
After a harrowing chase scene and exchange of gunfire, Nash becomes increasingly paranoid and begins to behave erratically. Russell Crowe as John NashAfter observing this erratic behavior, Sol follows Nash during one of his late night drops off "top secret Soviet codes". Sol sees Nash place the documents into a drop-box at a long empty building, and reports this behaviour to Nash's superiors. He sees that he is being watched during a lecture. Caught trying to flee, he is forcibly sedated and sent to a psychiatric facility. Initially, Nash's internment seemed like confirmation of his belief that the Soviets were trying to extract information from him, and that getting picked up by the officials of that psychiatric facility was a kidnapping by Soviet agents. Alicia, desperate to help her husband, visits the drop-box and retrieves the never-opened "top secret" documents that Nash delivered there. When confronted with this evidence, Nash is finally convinced that he has been hallucinating. The Department of Defense agent William Parcher and Nash's secret assignment to decode Soviet messages was in fact all a delusion. Even more surprisingly, Nash's friend Charles and his niece Marcee are also only products of Nash's mind. After a painful series of insulin shock therapy sessions, Nash is released on the condition that he agrees to
The second depicted area that needs to be inspected is the range of symptoms expressed in the film. There are three areas of symptoms that need to be checked for accuracy. First, the most easily identifiable by the viewing audience, are the visual hallucinations that he experiences. There are several inconsistencies between those symptoms that he experiences and those that Nash suffered. The first inconsistency that occurs is that Nash never actually experienced visual hallucinations. Actually, it is extremely rare for Schizophrenics to suffer from both visual and auditory hallucinations. The second inconsistency in the presentation of his (supposed) visual hallucinations is the vividness of the hallucinations. The vast majority of visual symptoms are described as "out of
6). In the movie A Beautiful Mind (2001), Nash went back to Princeton where he met a man named Parcher, who worked for the department of defense. Parcher tells Nash that he was needed by the United States Department of defense at the pentagon to help them crack a code. In another scene, Parcher gives Nash another assignment to look for certain patterns in newspapers and magazines to see if the Soviets were planning any harmful plans.
This hallucination of Ed Harris is the key factor in Nash's delusional thinking. He has delusions of being a secret government aide that is helping the U.S. find bombs throughout the country that were placed here by the
John Nash was extremely intelligent man but let his work take over a lot of his life. I would describe his attitude as cocky as he believed he was much smarter than others and loved to prove it which is shown in the beginning with the board game between him and Hanson. I figured that he was one that knew he was there for the education and not to party like his fellow classmates were doing. He would stay in his room studying and figuring out the hardest math problems and working them on the windows. Figuring out math problems was what made his day.The clues that were the most alarming were when Nash and Charles are sitting on the roof they are chatting on a university building roof and getting to know each other better. Nash and Charles are
According to the DMV-IV John Nash was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia because of certain criteria he showed, hallucinations and delusions. It is listed in the DMV-IV as 295.30 Paranoid Type-Schizophrenia (DSM-IV, 1994). Dr. Nash had a break from reality when he
John Nash, the main character, faces many challenges in his professional life as well as in his personal life. His friends who later become his colleagues think that he is just plain crazy. They also find him entertaining. However, they cannot resist looking down on him for his strange behavior, difficulties
is diagnose as Schizophrenic because he met category A with two or more disorders, which include delusion and hallucination. An example to proven that John Nash fulfill delusion is when he starts to see Parcher a person he made up to be a secret agent that he is protecting John from the Russians. John goes on missions for Parcher and see him everywhere he goes Nash himself felt followed by him. Another example was when he felt his baby boy in the bath tub and his wife came back seeing his boy crying in
In addition to hallucinations and delusions, other symptoms were portrayed in the film. Nash was constantly suspicious of the people around him. This was a result of his belief that the Russians were after him. For example, when Nash was taken to the psychiatric hospital, he thought that Dr. Rosen was Russian and trying to stop him from doing his work. As a result, Nash resorted to violence in order to protect himself.
His old friend Charles, as well as his niece Marcy come back into the picture to help him deal with the stress. Nash's new wife Alicia realizes her husband's condition one night when he comes home a mess and completely loses it when she turns on the lights in their apartment, screaming that the "Russians will find them!" Nash loses it on stage in the middle of a presentation at a math convention, and a psychiatrist sedates him and brings him to a mental institution. There he is diagnosed as schizophrenic and undergoes extensive shock therapy five times a week for ten weeks and is prescribed medication that helped rid him of his hallucinations.
The friend looked like he was fearful of John and what he might do. Many times people viewed Nash as dangerous and insane. Most of the characters carried a negative attitude toward mental illness in general, except for John’s wife Alicia. She is supportive and wants John to get better ‘so he can get back to being the man she married’. Alicia’s attitude toward his mental illness was understanding and supportive, while also pushing him to get better. The mental health professional in this movie is Dr. Rosen, who is only seen a few times in the whole movie. He is portrayed as a reasonable, logical man who is only there to help. Hyler’s stereotypes of mental illness can be applied to this movie also. Instead of Nash and his disorder portraying him as a homicidal manic or the like, Nash was portrayed as another stereotype of Hyler’s that is rarely depicted in modern films, the enlightened member of society. Nash is the enlightened member of society who envisions great things and appears to be a well-balanced individual, even with his delusions at the beginning of the movie. This stereotype contradicts our usual view of individuals with mental
In the movie it seemed like he did not have a lack of social involvement with the outside world but once the viewer realized that the roommate and Parcher were not real then it all came together. All of Nash’s symptoms started when he began looking for his original idea to be published. The DSM5 says the reaction to stress causes individuals with schizophrenia to have increases in negative mood and behaviors. I believe the stress of trying to find something new pushed him over the edge and forced him to create a world that helped him cope with the pressure but in reality it created more work for him to do. Nash’s over all functions in everyday life were impaired due to his disorder. After going to the psychiatric hospital and beginning his medication he began to suffer from intellectual paralysis cause by the medication. His delusion might have gone away but his work and overall well-being suffered which caused him to stop taking the medication and have another psychic
The movie, "A Beautiful Mind", John Nash, who is played by Russell Crowe, is a true story about a mathematician whose life is horrific because of his disease, schizophrenia. He was an egocentric man who studied Mathematics in Princeton University. During the whole time that he studied in Princeton, he was trying to come up with his own original idea. He felt that by only
Nash displays many abnormal behaviors. One positive behavioral symptom of schizophrenia displayed are his hallucinations. These all begin when he enrolls at Princeton. He thinks his roommate Charles is real when he is actually an imaginary person. All of his conversations with Charles are him talking to himself. In relation to Charles, his niece Marcee is also a hallucination. His next hallucination occurs when Parcher approaches him outside of the Wheeler Laboratory. He is talking to himself and this is shown when he walks past the guard and only the guard and Nash are seen. Another scene depicting Nash’s hallucinations with Parcher is when they get into a car chase with the Russian enemies. This entire event is imaginary, however, he believes it is real as you can see from
He continues to see Alicia, while at the same time remaining engrossed in his secret life of code breaking and paranoia. Mr. Nash eventually asks Alicia to marry him, and at the ceremony he sees Parcher parked across the street watching him. Not long after this, while making a package drop-off, a frantic Parcher, who informs him that they
John Nash stated that he works at MIT and as a secret agent that works to break Russian codes. He then realized that his job as a secret agent is not real.