John Nash: A Misrepresented Genius

“Find[ing] a true[ly] original idea[,] … is the only way I will ever [be able] distinguish myself”(A Beautiful Mind). The flaw of super ego is the perception of the unique centrism as preferable to social collectivism, finding one's place as opposed to the divisional. Nash was one of these for instance, he was an egomaniac, always focusing on what would make him be famous. For this reason, Hollywood portrayed John Nash’s life poorly, by neglecting the reality of his life actual characteristics, the realism of the cognitive diseases of schizophrenia, and overall theory that higher IQ leads to madness.

Although, Hollywood effectively depicted the emotional side of the film very well. They unsuccessfully achieved John’s true story, as well as

his dark true like nature. The actuality of John’s life was more twisted than what was viewed on screen. In the beginning, John was admitted into a psychiatric facility where he met a nurse named Eleanor Stier. While he was checked into  facility, John and Eleanor had an affair and, “[b]y the following year, Eleanor was pregnant, and gave birth to a son, John David Stier”(Henry). John was a self absorbed person, whom always was concerned about how society viewed him as well as his status. []
He later abandoned Eleanor and his child due to the fact that “[he] looked down [upon her] … working-class[,] …  and never gave the slightest hint that he might marry her.
In the movie, John only had one lover, Alicia Nash. They never mentioned Eleanor, nor his first child. This comparison shows Nash only caring for social position, rather than love. His ego shows no bounds, rather than his actual emotions. Later on, John became a teacher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Where he meets his second love affair,  Alicia Lopez-Harrison de Lardé, who was one of his physics students. He soon “married Alicia, the wife pictured in the film, some years later, and had another son, also named John — as though the first son [that he had] did not even exist” at all (Henry). Which was a probable cause for his later development of schizophrenia. The continuous stresses and the overall fascinations of his mathematical equations caused his mind to progressively worsen, “Nash [even] says, "my ideas about supernatural beings came to me the same way my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously”(Siebert).
Nevertheless, Hollywood insufficiently portrayed John’s case of schizophrenia in the film.

Due to neglecting the understanding of the intellectual disease, Hollywood viewed it as a chance to go off into a more understanding film as well as emotional. John suffered from a “serious mental illness that interferes with a person’s ability to think clearly, manage emotions, make [rational] decisions and [the ability] relate to others”(Nami). John first developed paranoia, which later on lead his many complications:

… Nash [going] nuts — [and succumbing] to schizophrenia in his twenties, which ruined him for decades — he fell into bizarre [fantasies] that included anti-Semitic world conspiracies, crackpot numerology, and a determined attempt to renounce his identity, even his citizenship, as an American. He abandoned his wife and son (the legitimate wife and son, that is; the illegitimate pair he had long ago renounced) and bounced around the world for years. Alicia divorced him, though they did stay together, after a fashion.

(Henry)
Overall John’s illusions were more biblical propficizing, rather than historical. John would hallucinate him as more of  “ … the left foot of God, but at other times he believed that he was the center of the universe. He often believed that he was a religious or messianic figure of great and secret importance”(Royster). Hollywood strayed from that path and decided to use events that were currently happening in 1947 to fill those gaps. They showed on screen, “‘Nash … stay[ing] up late each night [to] write letters to the U.N., the pope, and the FBI’ (Nasar, 2001). He believed that he was going to [find] an international organization”, so they made John’s paranoia swarm around the idea of Russian spies (Royster).
Throughout John’s life he was terrorized by his illusions, which scared Alicia. She took him, unconsciously knowing that she would enter him into another psychiatric hospital for help. After all of the treatments of medication and electroshock therapy. He was in dismayed of how the facility treated the rest of their patients included him (Siebert). This is one of the reasons on how Hollywood depicted Schizophrenia, wrong. Explaining the reasons he never wanted to go back to be treated for his condition, and how it the medication would “cloud” his judgement. The film might have bad connotation amongst actual patients suffering from schizophrenia, because they will think that their minds are strong enough to actually combat their illusions without being medicated. So some doctors are worried about some of their patients watching the film for that specific reason. One of these doctors, Dr. Tim Johnson, studies and treats patients suffering from the disease quotes, "I have not seen the movie, but many of my patients have," said Dr. Adelaide Robb of Children's National Medical Center in Washington. "I do not think that patients should go off medication and rely on willpower. People who are highly intelligent cannot just will away psychotic symptoms"(ABC News).
Regardless, overcoming the his schizophrenia, without medication is nearly impossible.

Schizophrenia is rare, “‘[a]bout 1 percent of the population will develop schizophrenia in their lifetime, and more than 2 million Americans suffer from it in a given year. Experts say that only one in five will recover completely — and they probably won't be able to do it through willpower alone”(ABC News). The veracity during his span from the age of  thirty to sixty, all depicts on the “so-called schizophrenia disappeared with no medications”, even going as far to write to himself about “[g]radually ... [beginning] to intellectually reject some of [his] delusionally induced lines of thinking that had been characteristic of [his] orientation”(Siebert).

John Nash was a very unique individual, he had the IQ 106. A real intelligence is finding common denominators, connecting things in more ways than one. It is not uncommon that people developed “schizophrenia[,] … are more likely work[ing] in creative jobs that require high levels of cognitive and artistic intelligence [rather] than individuals who do not suffer from these mental disorders”(Wlassoff).

    In conclusion, the movie portrayal of a misunderstood, A brilliant mind sees integration of people and ideas to the highest state of order as creativity, rather than the differentiation individualism associated with

divisions