When studying the inter-twisting dynamics of how a brain works under the diagnosis of schizophrenia, you realize the true struggle these people face every day. Ron Howard accurately depicted this by examining the real life story of John Forbes Nash through the intense and thought-provoking movie, A Beautiful Mind. John Nash was an Ivy league college student who attended Harvard university, he was there on a mathematics scholarship. John Nash’s intelligence and IQ made him who he was, it was his only way to show the world his value. He was a man on a mission who wouldn’t let anything stop him from achieving his lifelong aspirations, or at least the things he could control. John’s hallucinations began as soon as he got to college, this was due to the unfathomable amount of stress he was under to create an original thesis. However, in opposition to the popular belief of people fixated on reason, schizophrenia isn’t easily detected, in other words John Forbes Nash, a man of science, only believes in what he thinks he can physically see but, because of what he saw in his own mind, reality for John Nash was his roommate Mr. Herman and his niece Marcy and a government official who worked to catch the Russians, all of these people were birthed in his head and his head is where their residency stayed. He once stated that “The ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously.” Schizophrenia is a phrase not well
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.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder often characterized by abnormal social behaviour and failure to recognize what is real. Common symptoms include false beliefs, unclear or confused thinking, auditory hallucinations, reduced social engagement and emotional expression, and inactivity. A person with schizophrenia often hears voices, experiences delusions and hallucinations and may believe thoughts, feelings and actions are controlled or shared by someone else.
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.
Don’t be fooled, even though the title of my English 1101 course was “Let’s Make a Game” I do not enjoy designing or constructing games. What I learned from making them however, has already changed the way I write and communicate. In high school, every essay or piece of literary work was typed in Times New Roman 12-point black and white font. Most of the time these assignments were boring five paragraph essays written in the third person where I would try to prove a thesis statement. Throughout this course I have learned that the real world does not work in this manner. The best pieces of work are multimodal with design, color, pictures, and many other electronic aspects. If Facebook was just a compilation of black
1. The psychological disorder portrayed in character of John Nash in the film A Beautiful Mind is schizophrenia. The most prominent symptoms were hallucinations, grandiose delusions, paranoia, a persecutory complex. Beginning with DSM-V, two or more symptoms from the list of schizophrenic criteria must be present for at least six months and active for at least one month. John Nash certainly qualifies for another DSM-V criterion of diagnosis, social/occupational dysfunction, due to his apparent abandonment of relevant mathematical work in favor of conspiracy analysis/obsession. Nash is given the official diagnosis of schizophrenia during his admission to the mental hospital.
In Ron Howard's work, A Beautiful Mind, depicts the real life account of Professor John Nash and his struggle with paranoid Schizophrenia. The topic of mental illness has become popularized as of late, particularly in popular media (film, television). This focus on mental disorders has greatly improved awareness of mental disorders, but this media has become a double edged sword. The same process that educates people (ie these films and shows) can also disseminate largely false or misleading information. In the film, both sides of this information distribution phenomena are expressed. To evaluate the effectiveness of the movie to accurately describe the occurrence of paranoid Schizophrenia one must look at the accuracy of the onset,
A beautiful mind, a film based on a true story of a famous mathematician by the name of John Nash. John goes on to win the Noble-Prize for some of his published mathematical work which he conducted at Princeton University. Unfortunately, John suffered from a psychological disorder which interfered with his personal life, work, and generally every aspect of his life. The psychological disorder which John suffers from is schizophrenia. Although the etiology of schizophrenia is still unknown, it has become a much more treatable and manageable disorder, but still no cure.
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.
“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
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 film “A Beautiful Mind” is about the life of Nobel prize winner John Nash Jr who suffered with schizophrenia. The movie starts as Nash has entered graduate school at Princeton, he was a mathematical genius who made a discovery early I his career of an original idea that helped him earn international acclaim. The socially awkward genius soon found himself on a painful journey of self-discovery. John Nash made up a life that was not real, his friends and secrete job were also not real. He could not distinguish between what was real, imaginary and made up in his head. His diagnosis of schizophrenia interfered with his everyday life and overall caused him to break until he decided to ignore what would forever haunt him.
“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 Beautiful Mind is about Dr. John Nash who is a mathematical genius and a natural code breaker, at least in his own mind. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia which is a psychological disorder. According to Baird (2011), paranoid schizophrenia is when a person has “delusions of grandeur and persecution often accompanied by hallucinations” (p. 273). The person has a split from real life circumstances, where their new reality becomes actual fact to them.
John Nash suffers from Paranoid Schizophrenia. He is a gifted mathematician who began graduate school at Princeton University in 1947. We will begin Mr. Nash’s history from this point in time, for it is here that his symptoms first began to emerge. During this time in his life he is in what is known as the prodromal phase of schizophrenia, which is a period before active
Maintaining accuracy while producing a biographical film is a difficult undertaking. It requires complex research and genuine understanding of the person in order to accurately represent them on screen. In 2001, film makers attempted to translate to screen the life of John Nash in A Beautiful Mind (Gazer & Howard). John Nash, who is a notable figure in the world of academia and mathematics, won the Nobel Prize in economics for his game theory (Nash, 1994). Nash is also widely known for his long-term struggle with mental illness and was diagnosed with schizophrenia during his mid-thirties (Samels & MacLowry, 2002). In order to examine the accuracy of this portrayal it is necessary to examine the aspects of schizophrenia displayed in the film such as the mannerisms, signs and symptoms, and forms of treatment; while comparing them to the actual realities of this disorder.