THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF A BEAUTIFL MIND

GROUP MEMBERS:

AZBA ASGHAR BUTT 16L-4670

KHADIJA BILAL BHUTTA 16L-4721

GROUP NO. 5
Table of Contents

ABSTRACT:................................................................................................................................................. 3
Hypothesis: ............................................................................................................................................... 4
INTRODUCTION: ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Topic ......................................................................................................................................................... 4
Reason for selection .................................................................................................................................. 4
Background Information ........................................................................................................................... 4
Characters............................................................................................................................................. 4
Plot: ....................................................................................................................................................... 5
Unique Method of Solving Problem ......................................................................................................... 6
MATERIAL AND METHOD ...................................................................................................................... 7
Questionnaire ............................................................................................................................................ 7
Interviews.................................................................................................................................................. 7
RESULTS ..................................................................................................................................................... 7
DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................................................... 9
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................. 9
REFERENCE.............................................................................................................................................. 10
Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 10
ABSTRACT:
Sylvia Nasar present amazing movie in which she creates specific cultures and this film is basically
characterized as important art form. As, it is a source of popular way of entertaining and educating
the public about the schizophrenia a mental illness, the film not only entertain the viewers but also
inspired them and shows different aspect of life and how people are suffering from this. The film
is based on psychological topic schizophrenia, and use this mental illness as a life cycle. A
beautiful mind is one of the best psychological theme based movie in which they present a story
of John Nash who suffered from this problem and how this disease affect him and his family and
how he spend whole life with this disease and how he won Nobel prize. The object of this research
is to examine and recognize the psychological aspect of schizophrenia, as we get information of
schizophrenia through the narration of the story of film THE BEAUTIFUL MIND. This film wants
to give information about schizophrenia and the effects of this mental illness and the people who
are interacting with the main character named JOHN NASH and we analyze that how
schizophrenia of John Nash is represented in this film for the awareness of the people who were
not aware of this mental illness. This data is qualitatively analyzed. Analysis on the film THE
BEAUTIFUL MIND shows the story from the point of view of the main character, where Nash
was not aware of the fact that he has schizophrenia , and how Nash and his wife, Alicia went
on the journey to find the way to cope with this mental disease. Through the analysis of this report
we discovered that how through the theatrical techniques and filmic genius the issue of
Schizophrenia was addressed. After our analysis of the movie we discovered that there is a deeper
meaning to this movie as its purpose is not only to entertain but also to create awareness about
psychological disorders like schizophrenia. The movie not only presents the chronicle of their
journey but also enhances and supports the people suffering from the psychological disorders like
schizophrenia. The movie also goes on to present some of the symptoms and treatments to recover
from this disease. As the movie is so enriched with the facts and information about schizophrenia,
we are curious to find whether the movie A Beautiful Mind creates awareness about the disease
within the general public.
Hypothesis:

So, our hypothesis statement is

A Beautiful Mind creates an awareness schizophrenia within the general public.

INTRODUCTION:

Topic
The topic that we chose for our report is the Psychological aspects of A Beautiful Mind. As
the psychological disorder being discussed within the movie is that of schizophrenia so within our
topic we will only focus on the disease of schizophrenia. Furthermore, it is our belief that movies
like A Beautiful Mind help to create a general awareness within the public. So, through our
research we hope to analyze whether our perception about the awareness created through the movie
is true or not.

Reason for selection

We chose this particular movie as it is based upon one of the greatest mathematical minds of all times. Not
only is this movie about hardships and dilemma but it is also the portrayal of the strength of will power and
overcoming difficulties. Also, the depiction of schizophrenia is very impressive and we were personally
quite intrigued to find out further information about the disease. On that note, we assumed that some people
might also share our curiosity about the disease as well. Also, recently there has been an amendment in
Pakistani law by the Supreme Court according to which schizophrenia has been declared as not a
psychological disorder. So, all of these factors help to play an important role in our choice of topic.

Background Information
Characters
Some of the characters within the movie were

1) John Nash
He was the genius mathematician who suffered from schizophrenia.
 2) Alicia Nash
Johns beautiful, intelligent and loving wife who stayed with him
through decades of marriage, from the 1950s to after 2000, despite
the difficulties of living with a person with severe mental illness.

3) William Parcher
An agent of the US government who convinces John to help him.
Parcher is not a person who really exists. He is just a hallucination.

4) Charles
Johns roommate at Princeton who studied English literature. Like
Parcher, John is not really who he appears to be, he is also a
hallucination.

5) Marcee
She was also a person who really does not appear in the actual
world. She is the neice of Charles and she is also a hallucination.

Plot:
John Nash was typically a student at Princeton
University, John Nash struggles to make a valuable role
to serve as his legacy to the world of mathematics and He
finally makes a revolutionary come through that will
ultimately earn him the Nobel Prize. After graduating
from the school he started teaching, becoming
romantically involved and fall in love with his student
Alicia. In the meantime the government asks his help with
breaking Soviet codes, which soon gets him involved in a terrifying conspiracy plot. Nash grows more and
more obsessed until a discovery that turns his entire
world upside down. Thus, it is only possible with
Alicia's help that he will be able to recover his mental
power and get back his status as the great
mathematician we know him as today.
A Brief Note on Schizophrenia:

Many people used to think that schizophrenia was a mental disease marked by split personality,
which exists when one person seems to have two or more completely different personalities. In
fact, most people who have this mental illness do not have that condition, but they do suffer from
such things as inability to think clearly, manage emotions, make decisions, or relate to others. Most
seriously, schizophrenics can suffer from hallucinations (seeing things that dont really exist),
as well as a fundamental and unpleasant change in how they experience basic emotions, incoming
sensations and even themselves. In short, this is a terrible illness that can take away a persons
ability to lead a normal life, though fortunately, it has become more and more treatable.

A Brief Note on the Language of Advanced Mathematics:

Throughout the film, there is frequent reference to many of the abstract mathematical theories that
John Nash and his colleagues were working on, including in such specific areas as equilibrium
points, manifold embedding, Brouwer's fixed point theorem, Riemanns functional equation
hypothesis and other bizarre topics that only the most sophisticated mathematicians could truly
understand.

A Brief Note on Princeton and MIT:

Most of the film centers on Johns life at two of the best Universities in the United States. Princeton
is located in the small town of Princeton, New Jersey, about an hour from New York City. When
John arrived as a young student in the late 1940s, Albert Einstein was still a professor there (He
died in 1955, having been at Princeton for nearly 20 years).

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, known by most as MIT, is perhaps the most
prestigious school of technology and applied sciences in the world (In the film, John taught for a
few years at a defense department center at MIT called the Wheeler Institute). MIT is located just
minutes from Harvard University, in Boston, Massachusetts, which probably has more excellent
universities than any city in the world. (Weschler, 2002)

Unique Method of Solving Problem

The method through which we thought to prove our hypothesis was to conduct surveys as well as interviews.
In order to first start the with our research we took interviews of our subjects asking them about
schizophrenia and what they knew about it. After that we asked them to watch a few clips from the movie
A Beautiful Mind. Having done that we made them fill out our surveys which asked them about the
difference in their knowledge of schizophrenia before and after watching the movie. Through this method
we analyzed their responses which helped us in determining whether our hypothesis was correct or not.
Some of the results will be discussed below.
MATERIAL AND METHOD
Questionnaire
We devised a questionnaire comprising of 9 question. Our targeted audience comprised of 50 individuals.
There were equal males and females in our targeted subjects. There was no subject younger than 18. But,
otherwise there were no age constraints.

Interviews
We took two interviews from all the fifty subjects. The first interview was taken before they watched the
movie. While the second interview was taken after the subjects had watched the movie. This was done so
that the subjects gave an honest evaluation of the survey which covers both the before and after knowledge
of the object of our research.

RESULTS
People who had seen the movie are as shown below

Have you seen this movie before?

Movie awareness

Watched
20%

Not Watched
80%

Not Watched Watched

Have you ever heard of the term Schizophrenia?

Do you know anything about this term?

The knowledge of people before watching the movie was:

Before Watching Movie

Extensive None
A bit
6% 12%
14%

Know Term
68%

None Know Term A bit Extensive

The knowledge of people after having watched the movie :

After Movie
None
0%
Extensive Only Term
8% 14%

A little
78%

None Only Term A little Extensive

DISCUSSION
The result clearly shows that before watching the movie 12% of people new nothing about the
topic and afterwards every person knew about it. Furthermore, only 14% of people had knowledge
about the topic. This increased to 78%. This shows that our hypothesis was correct.

CONCLUSION
As the results clearly show there is a vast difference about the levels of awareness of people before
and after watching the movie. Furthermore, these results clearly show that the awareness has
increased after watching the movie. So, our hypothesis that A Beautiful Mind creates awareness
has been proven to be correct.
REFERENCE

1. "A Beautiful Mind (2001)". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved November 8, 2010.
2. A Beautiful Mind at the Internet Movie Database
3. "A Beautiful Partnership: Ron Howard and Brian Grazer", from A Beautiful Mind DVD,
2002.
4. "Development of the Screenplay", from A Beautiful Mind DVD, 2002.
5. "Dave Bayer: Professor of Mathematics". Barnard College, Columbia University.
Retrieved May 8, 2011.
6. "Beautiful Math" (PDF). 2 June 2002. Retrieved 20 October 2015.
7. "The Process of Age Progression", from A Beautiful Mind DVD. 2002.
8. "Scoring the Film", from A Beautiful Mind DVD, 2002.
9. A Beautiful Mind DVD commentary featuring Ron Howard, 2002.
10. "A Brilliant Madness". PBS.org. Archived from the original on July 14, 2007.
Retrieved August 16, 2007.
11. Sylvia Nasar, A Beautiful Mind, Touchstone 1998.
12. Nasar, Sylvia (1998). A Beautiful Mind: A Biography of John Forbes Nash, Jr. Simon &
Schuster. ISBN 0-684-81906-6.
13. "Nash: Film No Whitewash". CBS News: 60 Minutes. March 14, 2002. Archived from the
original on August 7, 2007. Retrieved August 16, 2007.
14. Goldstein, Scott (April 10, 2005). "Eleanor Stier, 84". The Boston Globe.
Retrieved December 5, 2007.
15. "MIT facts meet fiction in 'A Beautiful Mind'". Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Archived from the original on July 12, 2007. Retrieved August 16, 2007.
16. "FAQ John Nash". Seeley G. Mudd Library at Princeton University. Archived from the
original on July 16, 2007. Retrieved August 16, 2007.

Bibliography
Weschler, R. (2002). A Beautiful Mind (Drama/Biography)(2001).
 QUESTIONNARE
AWARENESS OF SCHIZOPHRENIA THROUGH
A BEAUTIFUL MIND
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Occupation:

Questionnaire
Before Watching the Movie
1. Have you seen this movie before?
Yes No
2. Do you have any knowledge about psychology?
Yes No
3. Have you ever heard of the term Schizophrenia?
Yes No
4. Do you know anything about this term?
Yes No
5. Do you think that it could be a disorder?
Yes No
6. Have you ever had a personal experience with people suffering from schizophrenia?
Yes No

After Watching the Movie

1. Did you learn anything from the movie?
Yes No
2. Was your previous perception false?
Yes No
3. Did your perception of schizophrenia change?
Yes No
4. Do you know more than just the name of the term?
Yes No