A Beautiful Mind - John Nash Essay Example
A Beautiful Mind
John Nash- A brilliant mathematician, John’s troubles begin during his time at Princeton. He begins to hallucinate, consistently carrying on conversations and relationships with people who never existed. To make matters worse, he is already anti-social, and has a tendency to isolate and bury himself in work. As time passes, his condition worsens. He begins to believe that there is this elaborate scheme against him; he believes he is being forced to work for the government to decipher codes. That they inserted a coded chip in order to keep track of him, and if he doesn’t comply with their wishes, they will expose him to the Russians, who in turn will kill him. This interferes with his personal and work life tremendously. Although he is able to carry on the basic everyday tasks such as taking care of personal hygiene and eating, he is not able to differentiate the real world from his imaginary world. Eventually, the situation gets to be so extreme that he is placed in a mental institution for a certain period of time, undergoing shock and insulin therapies in order to “treat” his condition.
Professor Nash’s case is a very straightforward and meets the criteria for Paranoid Schizophrenia. To be clear Schizophrenia is not the same thing as multiple personality disorder, because Schizophrenics don’t have problems with a split personality but instead a split mind. Hence the Latin derivation “Schitz”Split and “phrenic” meaning mind. Mind in the sense of what is actually real and what is not.
Historically, people who behave differently than the general population or established “usual” have been deemed “abnormal” and therefore pathological (diseased, disordered, or even demonic, especially in earlier times and in primitive or remote social cultures), by their patterns of emotion (a subjective feeling that includes arousal [cerebral, autonomic, and limbic], cognitions [thoughts, values, and expectations], and expressions [ frowns, smiles, and
John Nash- A brilliant mathematician, John’s troubles begin during his time at Princeton. He begins to hallucinate, consistently carrying on conversations and relationships with people who never existed. To make matters worse, he is already anti-social, and has a tendency to isolate and bury himself in work. As time passes, his condition worsens. He begins to believe that there is this elaborate scheme against him; he believes he is being forced to work for the government to decipher codes. That they inserted a coded chip in order to keep track of him, and if he doesn’t comply with their wishes, they will expose him to the Russians, who in turn will kill him. This interferes with his personal and work life tremendously. Although he is able to carry on the basic everyday tasks such as taking care of personal hygiene and eating, he is not able to differentiate the real world from his imaginary world. Eventually, the situation gets to be so extreme that he is placed in a mental institution for a certain period of time, undergoing shock and insulin therapies in order to “treat” his condition.
Professor Nash’s case is a very straightforward and meets the criteria for Paranoid Schizophrenia. To be clear Schizophrenia is not the same thing as multiple personality disorder, because Schizophrenics don’t have problems with a split personality but instead a split mind. Hence the Latin derivation “Schitz”Split and “phrenic” meaning mind. Mind in the sense of what is actually real and what is not.
Historically, people who behave differently than the general population or established “usual” have been deemed “abnormal” and therefore pathological (diseased, disordered, or even demonic, especially in earlier times and in primitive or remote social cultures), by their patterns of emotion (a subjective feeling that includes arousal [cerebral, autonomic, and limbic], cognitions [thoughts, values, and expectations], and expressions [ frowns, smiles, and