[PenultimateManStanding]

spoiler alert: if you haven't seen this movie, don't read this and rent the movie, but I'm assuming most of you have already seen it. I showed it to my son and 16 year old daughter today. My son had already seen it but my daughter hadn't. She was fascinated until she found out that the marvelous best-friend ex-Princeton-roommate was a schizophrenic projection and didn't exist and then she said "I don't like this movie." Earlier when she realized that Nash was sick she wanted to know ahead of time if his wife was going to divorce him. I told her no. Just wait. Then when she said liked that roommate I told her it's a true story. The heart of the movie is in the scene where he's knocked his wife over by accident trying to save her from the spook-projection played by Ed Harris. The wife freaks and runs out to her car to leave when he stops her and declares that the little girl he sees hasn't aged, she never gets bigger so she can't be real. For a schizophrenic psychotic to realize the truth is no doubt very rare. The rest of the movie deals with his ultimately successful efforts to function as a schizophrenic without medication. Even when he accepted the Nobel Prize in 1994, he was still seeing these lovely projections that he had said goodbye to 30 years earlier. They followed him around but he had determined that he must never talk to them again. He described it as a 'diet of the mind'. He very much missed these 'people' and wanted to talk to them but knew he could not. Amazing movie, amazing performances.

[Ludi]

I've not had many hallucinations, but, I think delusions are only dangerous, well, if they're dangerous. If they're benign, don't interfere with the life one wants to live or give one dangerous impulses (for instance, saying one is wrong and bad and should die) one can probably live with them ok without medication. I'm not sure why Nash decided not to communicate with his hallucinations. I've not seen the movie and probably won't see it, because movies about loons upset me a lot.

Do you know why Nash decided to ignore his hallucinations?



<<<<<< a loon (not heavily medicated)

[PenultimateManStanding]

Do you know why Nash decided to ignore his hallucinations?

He had to. They were a major breach with reality. He lost touch with reality and could not function. The element of paranoia was very strong and he couldn't shake the feeling that the Russians were going to kill him. The dramatic tension was astonishing in the movie when he realized his situation. Of course he had already painfully realized it when locked up in a psychiatric hospital and they gave horrible treatment to shake him out of his schizophrenic world. But he couldn't stand the effects of the medication. He couldn't do mathematics, he couldn't make love to his wife and he felt aimless and listless. So he quit using the pills and the problems all came back. The same total break with reality. But Nash was one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century and he was determined that he could beat it without medication. It's a true story Ludi and it ends well with Nash giving his acceptance speech at the 1994 Stockholm Nobel Prize ceremony which he addressed entirely to his wife who stood by him through the worst.

[PenultimateManStanding]

Of course, that's the Hollywood version. Though grounded in truth, many sentimental liberties were taken. The wife wasn't exactly so supportive if you read the wiki article, and he's definitely more creepy looking than Russell Crowe. Unless he died in the last 12 months, he's still around. I wonder what he thought of the movie. He has refused to take anti-psychotic medicines since 1970. And his mind is still active and creative.

[I_Like_Plants]

the book and Internet articles are worth reading in this.

Nash stated that his hallucinations/delusions came to him the same way his mathematical theories did, so he naturally just believed them.

Nash does not "take the modern drugs" as they made him state for the movie late in the filming - that was a dirty trick, he doesn't use 'em and it was put in as a plug for the drug co's.

I think Nash is an amazing case, I also think we'd see more "self cures" if we had more schizo's able to stay away from hard drugs and crime and starvation, and living into healthy old age. Nash was able to do this because when he went really feral, he was not used to street culture so he never got hooked up with the local heroin etc pusher. Then as he got older he started hanging around the college, and this was tolerated - enough professors and students were sympathetic to him, and it was not the Total Security atmosphere you find on campuses now. There's enough hand-outs, cafeteria food, half-eaten slices of pizza lying around, that Nash could eat OK. Getting old enough to carry some body fat and sheer strong constitution and mind enabled him to become functional again. I mean after a while a guy's just gotta realize that he's been right around the campus where the boogiemen could find him, but they've not killed him in say 20 years..... hmm ... that and the girl not scaring the pigeons....

Nash was always weird. He was a weird kid and a weird teen. Working for RAND and being involved with all that cold war shit would push anyone who's iffy, over the edge.

[PenultimateManStanding]

He was, as I have discovered from research, schizophrenic for 30 years. He wandered around as the "Phantom of Fine Hall" at Princeton, barefoot with long dirty hair and teeth worn to stubs. The mathematics faculty protected him because as one said, his work that won him the Nobel Prize was trivial. His real work was in the stratospheres of mathematics. And they all knew it. His wife divorced him but she took him in to protect him and called him her 'boarder'. (they remarried. She was as beautiful as Jenifer Connolly) Some went to great efforts to keep him distant while others stood by him. Somehow, when he turned 60, he had a remission. Since then he is not arrogant and rude as he was in his youth. He is now sweet, charming, articulate and shy but warm. 79 years old.

[Eli]

That and turning twenty and entering adulthood. Schizophrenics need as much help as they can get.

Nash is more of a one off thing. Most people need to be medicated and to stay on the meds. What happens most time is people start to feel better and are able to think more clearly. What happens next is they feel better and decide "I am not so crazy, I don't need no stinking medicine" next thing you know they are whacked out of their gourd talking in to their shoe to the aliens that are watching them and won't let them sleep.

The biggest thing about Nash is that he was a very brilliant mathematician, no one knew he was crazy because all those fuckers are nuts, Nash was just a little further down the spectrum is all.

[I_Like_Plants]

Yeah his wife left him, then tolerated him when it looked like he might pull through and become famous in the future, then gets all lovey-dovey again when he's going to win the Nobel and have a movie done etc.

Great guy - it would have been great to have known him, even in his "phantom" stage.

[PenultimateManStanding]

I mean after a while a guy's just gotta realize that he's been right around the campus where the boogiemen could find him, but they've not killed him in say 20 years..... hmm ... that and the girl not scaring the pigeons....

that's a good quote, plants. hmm, why don't those pigeons scatter? And where is Boris anyway? I think the criticisms of Ron Howard's movie are unwarranted except perhaps for that line you noted which is quite suspicious and unfair to the truth that Nash refused anti-psychotic medicine at all, period.

[emailking]

The sad thing is the in reality his wife DID divorce him because of his condition. But that woulnd't have made as great a story so they changed it.

[Ludi]

That's what I'd heard, emailking.


PMS, see that's what I mean about the illusions being "dangerous." If they made him paranoid if he listened to them, then they were clearly dangerous. But if they had been for instance happy dancing fairies, they might not have been dangerous and there may have been no need to ignore them.


One of the recent developments in treatment of delusional disorders is cognitive behavioral therapy to help people realise they are being delusional, that what they are experiencing isn't real, and how to deal with that. I've done a bit of this myself and it works moderately well for my mild case. But, one needs to have a sort of "reality checker" another person with whom to discuss things and figure out logically if they are real. I don't know that it's possible for many people to do it alone. When one is experiencing these things they are completely convincing.

[emailking]

Ludi, that sounds sort of like what lucent dreamers practice. Like they learn to look at their watch and see if they can read it to determine if they are dreaming. That kind of stuff. Apparently with enough practice, anyone can learn to regularly have dreams in which you know you are dreaming and can control the dream.

[oowolf]

A great movie. The device of taking the madman's view of things goes way back to Robert Wiene's 1919 German Expressionist masterpiece "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"--one of the few films of the 'teens that still bears watching.
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Bung ... ligari.htm

[PenultimateManStanding]

PMS, see that's what I mean about the illusions being "dangerous." If they made him paranoid if he listened to them, then they were clearly dangerous. But if they had been for instance happy dancing fairies, they might not have been dangerous and there may have been no need to ignore them.

The movie was very loosely based on the real John Nash and Ron Howard admitted as much. For instance, he was actually a non-functional schizophrenic for 30 years. The last 18 of those years without anti-psychotic medicine. The movie shows him learning to cope while his son was a baby, when he was in fact a raving lunatic for all of his son's youth and early adulthood. The manner in which the movie portrayed his illness had two very sweet hallucinated companions, not unlike your "happy dancing fairies." Plus, Crowe played him as kind of an endearing nerd who dressed funny, but the real Nash was arrogant and rude with a hot Central American wife. The audience has sympathy for Crowe-as-Nash, but the real Nash wouldn't have appealed to many. His only real appeal was intellectual where he truly did shine. I imagine his illness was very ugly from what I've read, so it's not really pertinent to discuss genuine mental illness from this Hollywood perspective. The real mystery of John Nash is how he just got better for no known reason at the age of 60, with no treatment. He got his mind and soul back which probably never would have happened if he had kept taking medicine. Having said all that, it is still a great movie and definitely worth watching. (plus, if you watch it carefully, you'll see that they put in hints of all these things while carefully preserving the crafted Hollywood version that audiences can accept, just leaving out the essence and some of the unpalatable aspects in all their sordid truth. Ron Howard wanted to do a movie about mental illness because he saw a traumatic thing happen on the set of The Andy Griffith Show when he was a boy-actor playing Opie)

[Eli]

Ok, what was the traumatic thing that Opie saw Pen?

Was it when killed that Robin?

[PenultimateManStanding]

Ok, what was the traumatic thing that Opie saw Pen?

What I read was that on the set of The Andy Griffith Show somebody had a mental collapse and curled up into a fetal position. The young Ron Howard was frightened by it and that's why he wanted to make a movie about mental illness. Mental illness is frightening to be sure. Anyone exposed to it knows. Anyone subject to it knows even more.

[PenultimateManStanding]

btw, Eli, if you haven't seen the ravages of mental disease up close and personal, and for all I know you have, I sure have, I believe that that will be the first casualty of post-peak life. Millions of people will lose their minds and go crazy before the die-off begins.

[Eli]

I hear what you are saying but I think the people who are already crazy will not have it as bad as those driven mad.

The stress that all of us are going to feel because of PO and the troubles that it will cause in society in general will cause a lot of people to loose it.

[GoghGoner]

I always felt a kinship with this fellow dot connector.

Death of John Nash and His Beautiful Ideas

That concept turned most of economics on its head. Before Nash, the dominant idea of “equilibrium” in economics was the Walrasian equilibrium. It was sort of a Panglossian idea-- everything that people want to sell gets bought, and markets are efficient -- no money gets left on the table, so to speak. But in Nash equilibrium, you can get outcomes that are far darker -- for example, in the Prisoners’ Dilemma, where two rational prisoners will always betray each other, leading to a worse outcome for both than if they had both kept silent.

When you go from Walrasian equilibrium to Nash equilibrium, you get all kinds of non-optimal economic outcomes. You can get markets that break down completely, because no one can trust their counterparties. You can get companies hurting the economy by competing with each other too much. Suddenly, you go from a perfect free-market paradise to an uncertain, confusing thicket of potentially destructive competition. Economists before Nash had created a few isolated models of strategic interaction, but Nash created a system.

[PrestonSturges]

"A Beautiful Mind" seemed a lot better than "The Imitation Game" about Alan Turing. The movie version made Turing autistic and very unpopular, when he was actually normal and popular. Also, it made a whole bunch of other people who were friends out to be his enemies. This really angered their families because it made them look like their petty bickering would let the Nazis win. And there were a lot of raggedy war movies cliches. For instance, the "But my brother's on that ship the Germans are about to attack!" goes back to the novel version of "The Caine Mutiny" in 1951.