Ayesha Wiseman
Psychology 204
Prof. Shallenberger
20 October 2016
In the movie, “A Beautiful Mind” John Nash shows clear signs of schizophrenia. As the movie progresses you will see what is to be a paranoid schizophrenic. John begins with delusions of being tormented, thinking that the government is out to get him. Nash also suffers from hallucinations, which he starts displaying once he attends college. He starts believing that he has a roommate while in school which isn’t true. He constantly has delusions all through his life in which he starts to imagine seeing a little girl. Nash also starts to display signs of restricted emotional expression, which occurred when he left his child unattended in the bath tub. He displayed
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Further signs of this disorder are shown particularly by auditory and perceptional disturbances, a lack of motivation for life, and clinical depression. “Brown University Didactic Readings: DSM-IV Schizophrenia (DSM-IV-TR# 295.1-295.3, 295.90)” (PDF). Brown University. Pp. 1-11 Retrieved June 1, 2015. Nash believed his delusions were related to his unhappiness, his desire for attention and his charismatic way of thinking. He also said, “If I felt completely pressure less I don’t think I would have gone in this pattern. Nash started hearing hearing voices around 1964. In the movie, Nash had three different people he would see in his mind, Charles, Parcher, and Marcee the little girl. The more stress he endures the more he becomes delusional, especially when he realizes he’s about to become a dad. That’s the time he starts to experience loss of function at his job and his relationships. He started taking insulin and medication together to …show more content…
He also displayed signs of pattern seeking behavior, for example: watching a mugging, football team, and watching pigeons fighting over bread crumbs.
People with schizophrenia have either positive or negative symptoms. Nash felt that his environment and life stressors contributed to his schizophrenia. Nash has low interpersonal relations with his son and can’t properly function as a father. Even though he has a wife, I believe she only stayed out of unconditional love for him. He also displayed signs of social and occupational through the movie; in which he couldn’t properly function at work. His interpersonal relationships, and self-care wasn’t where it should be. He would scribble on the boards at Princeton with words no one could understand. I believe Nash always viewed himself as troubled, but he also felt he could just ignore the delusions, and hallucinations and be normal again. The illness seems to be triggered by the constant stress from his job and family life. But you do realize during the movie how much of an impact his illness had on his wife. This film really opened my mind and made me more sensitive towards people who suffer
...for Nash developing the disease. In real life however, schizophrenia is believed to be triggered by a combination of a person’s genetics, as well as the person’s environment. The onset of this disease is usually shown in males between 15 and 25. This is accurately shown in the movie by Nash’s symptoms becoming increasingly worse as he enters adulthood while at Princeton.
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
Once people was alerted to his disorder, they treat John Nash like they did not know how to act around him. His wife assumed he was hallucinating when he was talking to someone she did not see, but it was not the case all the time. For example, she thought he was hallucinating a garbage man collecting garbage late at night, but the garbage man was outside their house. His wife was also getting frustrated with him, while also trying to take care of him. She was frustrated that his senses, emotions, and sex drive was dull. She was truly upset and worried about his hallucinations and delusions. She wanted him to get better. Martin Hansen tried to help him by providing him with opportunities to work with
The film shows many positive symptoms of schizophrenia such as delusions of grandeur, delusions of influence, and persecutory delusions. Positive symptoms of schizophrenia are symptoms that are present in an individual due to the illness. 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 a 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 delusion of grandeur entails that an individual begins to think more highly of themselves, and believes that they are more important than other individuals in society. Nash believes that he is the most gifted mathematician, and he is the only individual who can break the Russian codes which are hidden in common day written media. During a mult...
The film, A Beautiful Mind (2001) is the fictional account of the life of a mathematician and the Nobel Prize-winning economist, John Forbes Nash, Jr. in his struggles with schizophrenia. The film was inspired from the unauthorized biography of the same name written by Sylvia Nasar (Wikipedia). Schizophrenia is a chronic brain disorder through which a person has difficulty in interpreting reality which may result to the combinations of hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking and behavior though this disease is not associated and cannot be referred to with split-personality but it is solely pertinent to disruption of natural balance of thinking and emotions (Mayo Clinic). This case study will feature the titular character of the film (stated above), John Forbes Nash, Jr. The observations and assessments as well as other useful information covered in this study were all based upon the film, A Beautiful Mind (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.
The main character Pat who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, displayed signs of manic episodes such as: fast talking, rambling with words, and no sleep. There were about 3 scenes of Pat waking his parents up early in the morning because he was looking for something, or could not wait to tell them something in the morning. Throughout most of the film, Pat exhibits a lot of delusions. Before hospitalization, it is briefly mentioned that Pat was accusing his wife and another teacher (who ironically was the man who this wife cheated on) embezzling money from him. After hospitalization, there were delusions that him and his wife were perfect for each other and they were going to be work through their marriage when that clearly was not the
“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.
The movie, A Beautiful Mind, depicts the life of John Nash and his struggle with the disorder, showing the symptoms and treatment methods used during the time period. In the movie, the main character, John Nash, experiences positive symptoms in which bizarre additions are added to the person’s behavior like disorganized thinking or in Nash’s case, hallucinations. At one point in the movie, John could be considered to have tactile hallucinations (sensations of tingling, burning) mixed with his visual and auditory ones when Parcher implants a device into his arm, causing a stinging or painful sensation. His visual and auditory hallucinations, although auditory hallucinations are considered more common in schizophrenics, the audience is not aware of these symptoms until mid-way through the movie, however, the nonexistent “people” he sees start in grad school with the first one being Charles Herman, his “roommate.” During this time, the main character would be in the prodromal stage of the disorder where the function is decreasing and the symptoms come on gradually at a rate unnoticeable to others, because he is
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.
For a long time I had an deep interest in schizophrenia, I think that mental illness such as this one of ten miss interpreted in the media. There have been several movies that display schizophrenia in pop culture. One of these movies is one that I very much enjoyed tittle sucker punch.
As portrayed in A Beautiful Mind, John Nash is clearly suffering from Paranoid Schizophrenia, although a case could possibly be made for a secondary diagnosis of OCD. His condition is clearly displayed through a pattern of behavior and symptoms including: distorted perceptions of reality, social withdrawal, paranoia, hallucinations, self-inflicted harm and general irrational behavior. He imagines 3 specific individuals throughout the movie, who accompany him throughout the remainder of his life. He avoids social situations, and when faced with them, has a difficult time relating to others, such as approaching a woman in a bar and forwardly asking to skip the usual pleasantries and go straight to sex. Unsurprisingly, this approach fails to achieve his goal. Paranoia is also on display on several occasions, seeing people watching him, believing himself to be spied upon, seeing shadowy figures outside his home. He also believed that an object had been implanted into his arm, prompting him to tear his skin apart in order to remove the object, which was never there to begin with.
In the film “ A Beautiful Mind” John Nash experiences a few different positive symptoms. The first of these positive symptoms are seen through the hallucinations John has of having a room -mate while at Princeton. This room- mate continues to stay “in contact” with John through out his adult life and later this room- mate’s niece enters Johns mind as another coinciding hallucination. Nash’s other hallucination is Ed Harris, who plays a government agent that seeks out Nash’s intelligence in the field of code- breaking.
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.