A Beautiful Mind: an Abnormal Movie Analysis

John Nash is an intensely unsociable man. Throughout the movie, ‘A Beautiful Mind’ he shows that in a few different ways. First of all, John Nash shows that he an intensely unsociable man when his wife finds out that his best friend is a not a real person. It’s just a figment of his imagination. He has no real friends. Secondly, he shows that he is unsociable because he eats and works alone at Princeton. He prefers to work alone in the library as opposed to being with his classmates in the faculty lounge. Lastly, he showed that he

2.The most highly visible aspects of Nash’s condition are of course his elaborate delusions and hallucinations (creating friends and relationships that don’t in fact exist) and his paranoia (for example, his belief that the hospital is run by the Soviets). DSM-V lists negative symptoms--alogia, anhedonia and avolition--that we don’t see in the film. When Nash is medicated and flailing in his life--unable to focus on his work and unable to respond to his crying child--he asks his wife, “What do people do?” It’s then that we see the most mood disorder-related aspects: avolition, defined as a lack of will and self-direction, and anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure. Alogia may be indicated when Alicia says to Nash on their picnic date by the lake, “You don’t talk much, do you?” and Nash responds,

Unfortunately his medication disrupts his relationship with his wife almost as much as his delusions did in the first place. For example, he couldn't respond to his wife in bed, he couldn't show affection to their child, and he couldn't do simple tasks around the house. He stops taking his medication and falls back into his paranoid delusions. Nash has a breakthrough and realizes that the people he is seeing are hallucinations when he realizes that none of them age.

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.

I think for the most part the movie did a good job portraying schizophrenia as it is in reality. Nash experienced delusions of grandeur that blurred the lines between reality and imagination, illuminating a powerful example of just how debilitating schizophrenia can be. Auditory hallucination is the most common symptom found in schizophrenia. The one’s experienced by Nash in the film were in-line with how the DSM specifies them to be. The film puts a large emphasis on the paranoia experienced by Nash. In the DSM-IV, paranoia was a specifier for a sub-category of schizophrenia, called paranoid schizophrenia. The new version of the DSM does not include paranoia as a specifier for schizophrenia, rather it is viewed as a comorbid mental disorder. One aspect I thought was overdone concerns the visual hallucinations. It was necessary for the entertainment value of the film, but is largely inaccurate in its attempt to represent the visual hallucinations experienced by individuals who have schizophrenia. Visual hallucinations are not common in schizophrenia, especially not to the degree the movie depicts, in which whole scenarios and events are vividly made up. I think it is a common misconception that visual hallucinations are a hallmark of schizophrenia. I think that the producers of this movie included

Throughout the film, John Nash displays some of the classical schizophrenic symptoms. This essay will elaborate more on these symptoms. Furthermore, what could have been

In the film, “A Beautiful Mind”, Russell Crowe plays the character of John Nash. John Nash is an awardee of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. During his university years, Nash puts extreme pressure upon himself as he tries to publish a work out of his original idea which allows him to develop a new concept of governing dynamics. Some years later, Nash is invited to the Pentagon to crack encrypted enemy telecommunication. Despite his success in this field, Nash believes that he can do greater things as he finds his regular duties at MIT unexciting and beneath his talent. Nash finds himself working under a mysterious supervisor, William Parcher, from the United States Department of Defense. He starts looking for pattern in newspapers and magazines in order to prevent a Soviet plot as he becomes increasingly obsessed about these patterns. Dr. Rosen suggests Alicia, John’s wife, that Nash has paranoid schizophrenia which implies that some individuals from his life were all part of his hallucinations which includes his roommate, Charles, and supervisor, William Parcher. However, John’s pride in his work and his desire to be great, prevent him from seeing the truth as he keeps working for Parcher. Despite facing such obstacles, Nash learns to accept that Parcher and other figures are all part of his hallucinations. I am the kind of person who sets my own personals goals and gets

After a period of normal life, Nash was again subjected to constant visual and auditory hallucinations because he stopped taking his medications. In a gripping scene, he interacted with his wife and his hallucinations at the same time, but eventually came to the conclusion that his hallucinations were indeed unreal because the little girl "never gets old". After many years of intense battling, Nash ultimately triumphed over his illness with his wife by his side.

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.

The insulin shock therapy was hard to watch because he had to have the injections five times a week for ten weeks with the shock treatments. When he was finally able to come home, he was just on oral medication. After a while, he decided on his own to stop taking the medications and the hallucinations returned to his mind. He has a moment of clarity, because he realizes one of his hallucinations can’t be real because she never ages. He returns to the hospital on his own and receives additional therapy. At this point in his illness, he chooses to ignore the hallucinations and not feed into them so that he is able to go back to work to some degree. I agree and disagree with the treatment that Nash received. I think the insulin shock therapy probably could have been discarded as it seemed the medicines he was on when he came out worked fine. I do think that he needed a caretaker to make sure that he took his medicine, instead of like his wife in the movie, giving it to him and walking away. She was entrusted with his care when released from the hospital, so must show some accountability to make sure he takes the medication. Cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy has been shown to be the most promising in helping patients with this disease (Franklin, 2004). I think with his treatment, it would have been beneficial to have some type of cognitive and behavioral management skills that would teach him how to

A Beautiful Mind (Grazer, Howard, & Howard, 2001) is a film about the life of John Nash Jr. John Nash was a mathematician studying at Princeton University on a Carnegie Scholarship in 1947. The film portrays Nash’s academic journey, career, and personal life. As an adult, John Nash was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is classified as an emotional or behavioral low-incidence disorder disorder (Smith & Tyler, 2010, p. 234). According to Smith and Tyler, about 1% of the general population is diagnosed with schizophrenia by 18 years old (2010). According to Mental Health America, “someone with schizophrenia may have difficulty distinguishing between what is real and what is imaginary; may be unresponsive or withdrawn; and may have

John Nash is well above average in terms of intellectual functioning. He is diagnosed with schizophrenia. He first started exhibiting symptoms of schizophrenia when he attended Princeton University. The symptoms that were observed were hallucinations and delusions. In Nash’s mind, he had a college roommate name Charles Herman. In addition, he stated that he met Herman’s niece named Marcee and a secret agent named William Parcher, whom he worked for at a secret location by breaking Russian codes. He developed persecutory delusions while working for William Parcher because he believe that Russians are trying to kill him for

The evidence of the cognitive symptoms, as with any disease, is more difficult to see externally in a person suffering from Schizophrenia. John Nash was not a very social person and I believe that this is attributed to the inability of expressing thoughts and feelings caused by the disease. His office in the movie looks somewhat like what I imagined the inside of his mind to look like; cluttered. Pictures on top of articles, on top of more pictures. There were papers hanging from the ceiling and string connecting pictures while forming patterns. One pattern I saw repeated a few times throughout the film was a spider- web image. This to me just shows how everything in his mind seemed as though it was connected in some way.

An alternative diagnosis that I would have given Nash had it not been ruled out by his obvious and severe signs of paranoid schizophrenia would have been bipolar I. This disorder encompasses many overlapping symptoms with his true diagnosis. “Bipolar I is the category in which mania is present and although not required may also show symptoms of depression” (Ray, 2015, p. 268). Nash never presented any signs of being depressed but he did experience periods of time where he seemed to be manic. He exhibits an inflated self-esteem and grandiosity through the duration of the film. After he begins working for the Pentagon, Nash begins to get obsessive about his work (a goal-directed activity) and starts sleeping less. These are all symptoms of bipolar I and Nash presented them all at different points of the movie. I ultimately ruled out this disorder because his positive symptoms of schizophrenia could not be explained by bipolar

In the movie, "A Beautiful Mind", the main character, John Nash, is a mathematician who suffers from schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is actually the most chronic and disabling of the major mental illnesses and it distorts the way a person thinks, acts, expresses emotions, interprets reality and relates to others.