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A Beautiful Mind Critique
A Beautiful Mind Critique
Media Critique
Portraying the life of John Nash, the film A Beautiful Mind was successful at
bringing schizophrenia to light. The film followed his life from the his school years at
Princeton all the way through his Nobel Prize acceptance almost 50 years later. While in
schizophrenia and even see an attempted treatment as it would be during his time in the
1950s. Through the narrative structure, those paying attention can follow the
psychological pathway that Nash follows, and even can learn a little about the causes,
Starting with the causes, not much is revealed in the movie about Nash’s personal
life. All that is told to the viewers is that he has no family, but whether that means he is
estranged from his family (possibly due to psychosis) or that his family is deceased is
uncertain. The current psychological belief is that the interplay of nature and nurture for
schizophrenia is such that our genes are directly related to how vulnerable we are to
different environmental risks. In this case, Nash is isolated from his family, and when he
arrives at Princeton, he also becomes isolated from the other students. Instead of
choosing to socialize, he spends his time alone, attempting to figure out a “novel idea”
that would earn him worldwide recognition and acclaim. When we find out that his
college roommate Charles is actually just a hallucination, we realize that truly he must
have created Charles to not be alone. Later on in the movie, he remarks that Charles has
been his best friend throughout life, which simply goes to show that his extreme
introversion would be directly correlated with his schizophrenic delusions and
hallucinations. What we do not know about Nash that we could possibly know about a
real life patient is his neurobiological state. The current belief is that problems in
glutamate are some of the main causes of schizophrenia. Unfortunately, none of this
information about Nash is revealed, meaning that we must simply settle for an
While the deeper causes of his schizophrenia cannot be revealed in the movie, his
symptoms take front stage. Most paranoid schizophrenics suffer from the positive
symptoms of schizophrenia (delusions and hallucinations) but do not really suffer from
any negative or disorganized symptoms. In the film, Nash fits this paranoid schizophrenic
model almost perfectly. As his main issues are from the delusions of grandeur and the
realizes that many of his friends are being published and being asked to provide key
services to the government (during a very stressful Cold War period), he eventually
begins to delude himself into believing that he is being called upon to stop a nuclear
bomb from going off in the states. It seems that his jealousy of his college friends feeds
his delusions of grandeur once he does finally get published. Similarly, when Alicia,
Nash’s wife, calls a psychologist to try and help him, he has delusions of persecution,
believing that the orderlies and the doctor are Soviet spies trying to gain information from
him. The most obvious point of his schizophrenia though is the visual hallucinations that
he suffers from for most of his life. In reality, visual hallucinations are very rare and the
real Nash only suffered from auditory hallucinations. Yet in movie form, the visual
hallucinations he has of a best friend, a little girl, and a government agent all feed into
psychosis and primarily schizophrenia. At first, the doctor tries to have a sit down
discussion with him, but Nash is still focused on his fantasy world, completely ignoring
the questioning of the doctor. At this point, the doctor realizes that a far more drastic
treatment plan must be taken, so he has Nash undergo insulin coma therapy. While no
patients into remission from their schizophrenic symptoms. Finally, when Nash is
released, he is put on a daily regiment of medications. During Nash’s time, this would
probably be the very first neuroleptics, or typical antipsychotics. While Nash is under this
treatment, he seems to suffer from emotional flattening and lack of focus, unable to
interact with his friends and family and unable to work on his mathematics. This causes
Nash to stop these medications to try to return to his normal life, but along with his
normal life came the delusions and hallucinations. In reality, the major side effect that is
reported with these antipsychotics is problems in the extrapyramidal system. The movie
then suggests that he continued living his life off the pills, but with the cognitive change
that he ignores the hallucinations. What would actually happen is that he would have
been taken off whatever prescription that he was on and changed to another
antipsychotic, eventually switching to the newer atypical antipsychotic drugs, which have
far less side effects. Were he to stop treatment entirely, he would most likely have
people may simply before see schizophrenia as a disease of people with low levels of
functioning and severe psychotic symptoms, the film portrays a highly functioning (at
most times) member of society who is waging a war for his own sanity. Truly, this film is
hallucinations are more for the viewer than a common symptom of schizophrenia.
Ultimately with the rise in awareness of schizophrenia, more money will come to
research which translates into a better scientific understanding of the disorder. So even
though the movie may have been made simply to make money, it also aids the fight
against schizophrenia.