The film “A Beautiful Mind” is about John Nash, a scientist who won a Nobel Prize Award despite his complication in the mind which is schizophrenia. John Nash, is an extremely intelligent person. During his days at college, he spends most of his time making mathematical equations and theories involving everything from pigeon movements to probabilities of getting girlfriends. His amazing work allows him placement for any job in the world. However, John is suffering from schizophrenia. This is manifested by his severe hallucinations, delusions and sometimes disorganized speech or thinking. For example, he has a couple of imaginary friends whom he constantly talks. In every situation, he thinks like this person is so real that he gives him order like helping him decode or doing some errands for him. This imaginary friend, he develops a very close relationship with. He considers him his confidant. There is also another imaginary person, he calls William. William works in the government. John, in his delusion, thought that he is working for him. William gives him orders like cracking military codes to find bombs because the setting of this story is during the Cold War. He thought he is tasked to be a spy of the American government to interpret the Russian codes. This clearly shows John Nash’s delusion of having a relationship with the unknown. Nash experienced …show more content…
His first imaginary friend comes out when he needs a good friend to talk to. Then, he has a delusion that he has his very good friend tagging along with him. On the other hand, when Nash has a problem with unemployment, William’s character surfaces in his delusion. When he has trouble taking care of his born baby, an imaginary child who keeps on bugging him to listen to the other personalities he imagines. When he also deliberately does not take his medication, his symptoms appear. These factors influence and cause his emotional
Once schizophrenia becomes severe, Walton develops two seemingly real characters in his imagination. Walton’s mental condition and obsessive longing for someone to connect with leads him to separate himself mentally from his superego and id.
The story is concerned with the conflict between his conception of himself and the reality.
The narrator's life is filled with constant eruptions of mental traumas. The biggest psychological burden he has is his identity, or rather his misidentity. He feels "wearing on the nerves" (Ellison 3) for people to see him as what they like to believe he is and not see him as what he really is. Throughout his life, he takes on several different identities and none, he thinks, adequately represents his true self, until his final one, as an invisible man.
The Soloist (Foster, Krasnoff & Wright, 2008), is based on a true story of Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Jr. who develops psychosis and becomes homeless. In the film, Nathaniel is considered a cello genius who is discovered on the streets by Steve Lopez, a journalist from the Los Angeles Times. Steve was searching for a story and he decided to write a newspaper article about Nathaniel. Nathaniel always had a passion for music. He was a child prodigy and attended Juilliard School of Music. However, he faced many complications at Juilliard, particularly hearing voices speaking to him. Unable to handle the voices, Nathaniel dropped out and ended up living on the streets of Los Angeles. Steve and Nathaniel develops an unexpected
John Nash’s needs largely influenced his hallucinations. John Nash struggled to connect with other people his entire life. He was an outcast and spent most of his time studying mathematics. His need to connect with another person was fulfilled when he hallucinated he had a roommate. This fictional roommate, Charles, was his closest companion. John confided in Charles whenever he faced a problem. Charles helped him through the struggles he faced while attending Princeton. Charles would also praise John whenever he made accomplishments in his work. John wanted to be appreciated for his hard work at Princeton and Charles made him feel important. John hallucinated that Charles had a young niece, Marcee. The hallucination of Marcee met his need to be a parental figure. He loved Marcee like she was his own daughter and wanted to care for her. Marcee was also comforting presence for John. She was an innocent child who would never harm anyone. John also hallucinated he was working with a secret government official, Parcher. John thought Parcher sought him out for his excellent skills in math. This met John’s need to be praised for his work in mathematics. John wanted to feel important and wanted to use his skills to help the world. When he imagined he was
The type of emotional disturbance John Nash experiences is paranoid schizophrenia. Some hallucination John Nash had was his imaginary roommate Charles Herman and Marcee. He had trouble distinguishing what was real and when he thought he was a spy hiding from the Russian. He had problems communicating with others.
In the movie, Nash hallucinates an individual named William Parcher, played by Ed Harris. Parcher works for the United States Department of Defense. He enlists Nash’s help in breaking Russian code in order to find a portable atomic bomb. The entire situation of the portable atomic bomb is a figment of Nash’s mind. This specific figment falls into the category of delusions of grandeur.
The subject John Forbes Nash, Jr. is portrayed as a typical student while attending Princeton University back in 1947. During his stay at Princeton, he would often be seen seated at the far end of the class isolating himself from the rest of his classmates and ultimately doesn’t appear to attend classes at all. He has difficulty associating with people around him though it is implied that he has made a few acquaintances and got to hang out with them at times nevertheless he was referred to as a genius and was extremely intelligent. He appears to have good family upbringing. Aside from difficulty in associating people, he has difficulty in accepting defeat and disappointment (A Beautiful Life (film), 2001).
The movie A Beautiful Mind, directed by Ron Howard, tells the story of Nobel Prize winner, and mathematician, John Nash’s struggle with schizophrenia. The audience is taken through Nash’s life from the moment his hallucinations started to the moment they became out of control. He was forced to learn to live with his illness and learn to control it with the help of Alicia. Throughout the movie the audience learns Nash’s roommate Charles is just a hallucination, and then we learn that most of what the audience has seen from Nash’s perspective is just a hallucination. Nash had a way of working with numbers and he never let his disease get in the way of him doing math. Throughout the movie the audience is shown how impactful and inspirational John Nash was on many people even though he had a huge obstacle to overcome.
“A Beautiful Mind” is a remarkable movie that sheds light on a complicated and debilitating disorder, in which the person seems to have no control over. It is enlightening and heart warming, I would highly recommend this movie. I must admit, the first time I watch the movie, I went into it not knowing anything about schizophrenia and when it was over, I still felt like I didn’t fully understand the disorder; however, the second time I watched with the knowledge of what schizophrenia is and all of the various symptoms and I find it astonishing that Nash was able to overcome the disorder by sheer willpower over his own mind, as he chose to ignore the voices in his head.
Millions of people make up humanity, coloring the world with their unique personalities, and while they are sometimes labeled as eccentric or even strange, no one goes beyond the surface to see what makes them who they are. What if the people seen every day as professors, students, or geniuses, become someone else? What if their reality is no longer the one shared amongst others in the world?
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 thought he was working for the government to break codes sent from Russia in the newspapers across the county. In this instance he was being delusional because he created an alternate reality for himself. He showed signs of hallucinations by “hearing” people he regularly talked to and gave them names, although in the movie, they were visual as well.
Nash showed much change in the way he was functioning through the movie. After treatment, it seemed like he had his disease under control, but he still had problems disbelieving in his hallucinations by still acting on them. For example, he still thought he was working for the government by helping them decode secrete codes in the newspapers. He tried to hide this from his wife by keeping all his work hidden in a shed. Eventually, Nash's life is seen as he returns to the college to teach and continues completing his mathematics work, while still seeing the delusions. This life is clearly far from normal. But for Nash, it also seems the best option.
In the beginning he has mild symptoms when his only hallucination is his roommate. This portion of the film shows him in the prodromal phase. After his introduction to William Parcher, he begins to be in the active stage. He has many hallucinations and delusions, and heightened perceptions. His residual stage begins when he notices that Charles Herman’s niece doesn’t age, and therefore she could not be real. During this stage he continues to have symptoms, but slowly learns to deal with them by distinguishing between what is real and what is not real. He does not fully reach his residual stage until after he learns to never interact with his visions of William Parcher, Charles, or Charles’s
A Beautiful Mind tells the life story of John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner who struggled through most of his adult life with schizophrenia. Directed by Ron Howard, this becomes a tale not only of one man's battle to overcome his own disability, but of the overreaching power of love - a theme that has been shown by many films that I enjoy.