A BEAUTIFUL MIND

A Beautiful Mind

A Beautiful Mind

1. What defense mechanisms does the main character use? Give specific examples. Define the defense mechanism and then talk about how the character uses it.

“A Beautiful Mind” by Ron Howard, is a movie based on the life of John Forbes Nash. He is a genies and a very good mathematician who comes up with a theory in governing dynamics in Princeton University. Nash seems a little weird, but nobody thinks that he is crazy. Nash is suffering from Paranoid Schizophrenia, in which at the time not even he is aware of it. He thinks he has a roommate named Charles, but in reality he is hallucinating. After studying in Princeton University, Nash accepts a position at the MIT and soon falls in love with Alicia Larde, one of his students and they get married. Neither Alicia nor the audience know he has a mental illness and that it is progressing, until he has a breakdown at his work and gets admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where he gets diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia. From that point on the movie shows Nash's struggle with the disorder and how it's messing up his relationship with his wife and his life's work as a mathematician. It takes time, but Nash learns to ignore and deal with his delusions and hallucinations leading him up to winning a Nobel Prize in economics (Hockenbury, 2007).

2. What type of psychological disorder do you think the character has? Give examples to explain your answer. Define the disorder according to the book and then talk about what symptoms your character displays.

This movie relates to one of the disorders, schizophrenia. We learned that schizophrenia has a literal translation of a “split mind” and that may start to appear in a person's late adolescence. We also learned that it is characterized as a disorder with symptoms such as disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions and hallucinations, inappropriate emotions and actions, and that medication is a very important part in the treatment of the disorder, which can all be seen in John Nash. In the beginning of the movie we see a scene of Nash just starting his first day at Princeton University. It seems he is in his late teens or early adulthood, which is the age where schizophrenia starts to appear (Torrey, 2001).

Throughout the movie, and especially in the beginning of it, Nash is ...