Compare And Contrast The Mind And A Beautiful Mind

John Nash, brilliant mathematician and Nobel Peace Prize winner has his experiences with Schizophrenia depicted in the New York Times bestseller, and the movie, “A Beautiful Mind”. The works, though significantly different in the portrayal of Schizophrenia and the symptoms related to the mental disorder, both comprise all of the aspects of the illness, necessary for diagnosis; Biological, Psychological, and Social facets (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The first scenes of the movie, “A Beautiful Mind”, take place at Princeton University. John Nash attends as a graduate student studying mathematics. The scenes reveal how socially inept Nash tends to be when dealing with people. Nash, regardless, of lack of social cues, is a genius whose break through in graduate school would eventually win him a Nobel peace prize. It was not until after Princeton that Nash attained a job as a professor; this job led to his marriage to his wife, Alicia, and the acquisition of a job working as a top-secret spy for the government of the United States. In reality this job was a

The movie revealed Nash to have a narcissistic god-like complex. For example, when talking to his hallucination, Charles, he described himself, saying, “Despite my privileged upbringing, I 'm actually quite well-balanced. I have a chip on both shoulders”(Grazer, 2002). Post grad-school, Nash made it clear, that he felt as though he was too good for his job as a professor; for example, the first day of class, Nash posted a nearly impossible mathematical equation and told his students that it would take months for them to figure out an equation to that degree of difficulty (Grazer, 2002). The way Nash dealt with human interaction in both the book and the movie digressed from normal reactions a person might have based on each particular scenario; innately characteristic to Schizophrenia (American Psychiatric Association,