John Nash

A Beautiful Mind and Schizophrenia

The movie A Beautiful Mind is a semi biographical story based on the life of the mathematician John Nash and his struggle with schizophrenia. The story begins in Princeton, where Nash is attending graduate school. Nash begins experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia, while in his early twenties at graduate school. Nash has both auditory and visual hallucinations that present themselves as his imaginary roommate and best friend, Charles and Charles's young niece. Throughout his graduate school experience Nash is socially isolated from the rest of his classmates.

After Nash graduates from Princeton, he becomes a professor at the prestigious university, MIT. While at MIT, Nash meets a student of his named Alicia, who he later marries and has a child with. At this time, Nash begins to have grandeur delusions that he is working for the national government, helping them to crack codes that no other mathematician is able to crack. Although for most people, this would seem to be a tip off that a person is experiencing psychosis, Nash was often referred to as a genius and was considered one of the top mathematicians and it was not as far fetched that he would be involved in high level government operations as it would be for the average schizophrenic. Because Nash was so smart, many of his bizarre behaviors were seen as characteristics of his gifted intellect.

This is also the time when the third of Nash's three imaginary people appear in the form of a government defense agent. The imaginary defense agent tells John to start looking for codes from the soviets in newspapers and magazines. His delusions start to become apparent to his wife and colleagues. In one scene a colleague follows him when he goes on one of his trips to drop off his evidence of the soviets plot against America. After this incident, Nash is forcibly taken to a mental hospital where he