Jafin Isac

Psych 205 005

Prof. Craig Cooper
A Beautiful Mind
Psychosis is a state in which an individual loses connection with reality.
Hallucination and/or delusions are the major symptoms of psychosis which
will eventually end up as schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a brain disorder
which causes severe impairments in all areas of the brain; that is perception,
cognition, emotion, and behavior. According to the World Health Organization
Schizophrenia affects approximately 24 million people in the world with more
than 50% not receiving the appropriate care (WHO, 2008). 90% of those
untreated live in developing countries (WHO, 2008). 2.5 million Americans
currently have this disorder. Since schizophrenia is a polygenic disorder,
therefore cause is unknown. This onset of symptoms start in young
adulthood up until thirty years. The movie A Beautiful Mind, directed by Ron
Howard, was rightly nominated for eight Oscars in the 2001 Academy
Awards. The movie revolves around life of John Nash who was a paranoid
schizophrenic because he experienced severe delusions and hallucinations. It
portrays the struggles and symptoms of a schizophrenic and how his selfdetermination along with the love of support of his loved ones helped him
overcome schizophrenia.
Symptoms of a schizophrenic are grouped into three categories:
positive symptoms, negative symptoms, and psychomotor symptoms. The

positive symptoms are added inappropriate behaviors such as hallucinations,

delusions, disorganized speech, inappropriate laughter, neologisms, and
clangs. Patients with negative symptoms have lack of appropriate behavior
such as being quiet, have anhedonia, have expressionless faces, avoids eye
contact, and speaks in toneless voices. And lastly, the psychomotor
symptoms includes awkward movements, repeated grimaces, and odd
gestures. Sometimes it may lead up to the extreme form called catatonia.
The movie starts off in 1947 at Princeton, when Nash is 19 years of
age. The first scene where one of the symptoms of schizophrenia is evident
is when Nash avoids eye contact with Nelson and Bender in the courtyard of
the university. Another instance when he fails to maintain eye contact is
when Sol visits Nash at his house. Nash fails to continuously maintain eye
contact with people throughout the movie. This action is subset of the
blunted and flat effect which is part of the negative symptoms category.
When John is conversing with Charles in the beginning of the movie John says
My first grade teacher told me that I was born with two helpings of a brain
but only had a helping heart. This point to the fact that he was socially
withdrawn from a very early stage of his life which pinpoints another
negative symptom. John exhibits a poverty of speech at the National
Mathematics Conference at Harvard University. In the scene where John is
holding his crying baby, he fails to attend to the need of the child and is
seemed to have not motivation and energy. These again indicates social
withdrawal, as well as loss of volition. Later when Alicia wants to have sex

with John, he refuses, indicating anhedonia. John is exhibiting negative

symptoms in all of the scenarios mentioned above.
Now onto scenes where John exhibits positive symptoms. John and
Hansen are both are recipients of the distinguished Carnegie Scholarship and
were in a state of constant competition up until John gets into Wheelers Lab
at MIT. In the beginning of the movie, John displays inappropriate effect when
he loses to Hansen in the game of Go. John states the game is flawed
instead being a good sport. Later in the movie, when Alicia asks John out to
dinner, John replies table for one, Prometheus alone chained to the rock,
with the bird circling overhead, you know how it is. This in my opinion
exhibits loose association. His hallucinating mind leads to the creation of
Charles, Marcee, and Parcher. In my opinion, the reason behind why Charles
and Marcee were created was to compensate for the social isolation John was
experiencing throughout his life. Part of the isolation was due to the fact that
he saw himself intellectually superior to his classmates. Parcher is the
second product of Johns imagination. With Parchers arrival, who works for
Department of Defense, John enters into a world of mystery, and danger. He
has to work for the government which involved deciphering codes, and
finding Russian nuclear bombs. With Charles and Marcee, Johns
schizophrenia was not on the same level as it is with Parcher. Parchers
auditory and visual hallucinations torments and disturbs John. While lecturing
a class, John visually hallucinates men outside stalking him and becomes
paranoid. This demonstrates paranoid schizophrenia.

However, I was not able to find many examples of psychomotor

symptoms in the movie. One of the psychomotor symptom John exhibits was
constantly touching his forehead while having serious conversations, and
random and awkward grimaces which made him social outcast to an extent.
Students also make fun of Johns awkward gait. And lastly, while holding the
crying baby he appears to be in a stupor, completely unware of the
environment.
All in all, this was a great movie which portrayed the symptoms of
schizophrenia brilliantly. Even though the most common type of hallucination
is auditory for a schizophrenic, the movie has a lot of visual hallucination.
The director, Ron Howard, might have did this on purpose to depict a better
picture on the audiences. This movie also gave the audience a peek into the
treatment John went through, and how he relapsed on he stopped taking his
medicine. It was wonderful to see that John made it through the tough times,
and finally won the Nobel Prize in 1994 through the support of his family and
friends.

References:
WHO. (2008), Mental health; Schizophrenia. Retrieved 9 June 2008, from:
http://www.who.int/mental_health/management/schizophrenia/en/