Christopher Nash's Schizophrenia In The Film, A Beautiful Mind

During the time when Nash attends the Princeton University, even though he is very intelligent, he finds it hard to connect with his peers and much rather to deal with numbers than with other people. Nash’s imaginary friend, Charles, starts his existence marks the start of Nash’s Schizophrenia. Charles might have been the result of this “self-induced” isolation. Man’s self-concept is related to his perception of others. Individuals’ functions are determined largely by their matrix of loves and hatred, attachments, identifications, and rivalries. The elevation of conscious is supposed to be a function of degree of integration of the conscious and unconscious (the degree of insight achieved). Nash’s detachment to the people around him is messing
up his perceptions and the degree of insight.
During the start of A Beautiful Mind, Nash is under a lot of pressure to publish in addition the rest of the film takes place during the Cold War. Tensions from publishing and the political and military tension during the Cold War will cause negative emotions in anyone, not only in Nash. Negative emotions use the power of individuals’ minds to meet their objectives. They can convincingly distort the truth without people’s awareness. For example the primary objective of anger is to destroy opponents. This emotion is designed by nature to make people fight more fiercely. Without conscious permission, anger will initiate past behaviors, which fueled people’s individuals’ resentment. It will impel individuals to provoke the opponents so that the opponents increased hostility intensifies their anger. Anger will, also, subtly guide individuals to fail in their project to intensify their resentment against fate, which “destined” them to failure. Just like the delusions suffered by Nash, people’s responses to negative emotions will not be rational behaviors. An example from the film is after the Pentagon dismissing Nash, he believes he is given a secret mission to decode soviet codes from newspapers and magazines. Emotional intelligences will present people with powerful arguments to support their objectives.
Emotions also have the capacity to restrict people’s access to their memories. An intuitive process within ones’ nervous system operates by eliminating alternative possibilities. By using animals as an example, an animal cannot afford to remain frozen between one decision to drink water and another to eat. If a decision to drink is taken, the system instantly inhibits its hunger demands. Fear, also, inhibits its option to stay back and fight. The animal’s intuition recalls memories of escape routes, while suppressing memories of previous successes. Its mind provides memories in context to enable it to cope with its immediate tasks. Hidden emotions forcibly redirect people’s minds without their awareness. With anger, their working memory also tends to decrease, making people lose sight of the immediate past. In the case of Nash, the delusions inhibited those entire real life viewpoints, which should have been obvious to a brilliant mathematician. For example, Nash has met Marcee a few times during each time he doesn’t noticed that there isn’t any changes in Marcee’s physical appearances (the most noticeably is that she doesn’t age). Because he believes Marcee to be real, that his longtime friend Charles is real; therefore, he eliminates the option that she doesn’t age.
One of schizophrenia symptoms is delusions and hallucinations. Delusions are false but strongly held beliefs that result from the patient’s inability to separate real from unreal events; and hallucinations, which are disturbances of sense perception. The delusions are proven when Nash believes he has a roommate named Charles Herman, who is his only close friend that always supports and accompanies Nash wherever he goes. The next is Marcee, who according to Nash’s mind she is Charles’s niece. Besides Charles and Marcee, there is another made up personality made by Nash’s mind, William Parcher who gets Nash to join a “government secret operation”. His work for Parcher to decode information and send classified documents to government’s house, they are all some hallucinations that happened to Nash’s mind for which he cannot differentiate from reality. They all become a part of his reality.
However, after an accident with the safety of his wife and child changed the balance of power in his mind.
Nash suddenly faced with the prospect of being permanently committed to an institution. In the film, as Alicia tried to flee and report his behavior, Nash stepped in front of her car to prevent her from leaving. At that critical moment, a sudden insight appeared to “heal” him permanently. He says “She never gets old.” Nash had realized that during his hallucinations over the years, Marcee had continued to be a little girl.
It was a single flash, which illuminated his entire mental landscape. The discovery is partly accidental and partly forced on him by his anxiety to avoid being committed. It is usually a traumatic incident, caused by emotionally negative behaviors, which cause people to have a look at themselves. An alcoholic has to become convinced that he has a problem, before he will submit to treatment. Usually it is when a person encounters a significant problem that his or her RI finally decides that his or her negative emotions need to be
controlled.
Even though Nash becomes aware of his delusions, he cannot avoid them. They continue to haunt him. Charles mocks him for cutting off their friendship. His hallucinations constantly reappeared, distracting him and disconcerting his colleagues. His only solution is to treat his “demons” as though they are real (they are part of his reality, yet not in others’). He decides to ignore them and gradually they troubled him less.
Self-awareness is the process of discovering the damning evidence, which proves to the RI that individuals’ behavior is not rational.
It is the skill of consciously identifying their emotional outbursts. People can gradually become familiar with the irrational viewpoints of each of the negative intelligences, which operate within their mind. While self-awareness can throw light on emotional irrationality, many of the behaviors will be triggered repeatedly by “speed dial circuits”, which respond to stressful situations. Negative emotions include fear, sadness, disgust, boredom, contempt, embarrassment, guilt, and shame; they may have a rational basis. For example, Nash is paranoid about his surroundings because of the Soviet agents are following him. It makes sense logically. It is during the Cold War that he is helping the government to stop Soviet plots; therefore, if the Soviets find out about him, they will most likely have apprehended him. This logic makes the negative emotions stronger and therefore the “reality” stronger. The irrational impulses the emotions trigger need to be acknowledged. Physical and mental exercises, which calm the mind, are necessary to prevent a relapse into old habits. However, only self-awareness can inform a person when he or she relapses into his or her old habits. Nash had to prevent new delusions from entering his mind. He uses to humorously check with his students and colleagues whether they too could see his new visitors. He is checking
for reality.