A beautiful mind: biography and mental illness

¶ … Beautiful Mind: Managing Schizophrenia

The movie a Beautiful Mind tells the story of Nobel Prize winner John Nash and his struggle with schizophrenia. The film shows that despite suffering from severe paranoid schizophrenia, Nash manages to effectively control the symptoms of the condition. Even more impressive is the fact that he manages this without the use of medication. He achieves this by using his own mind to control the condition, with the techniques of perception checking and self-talk used. By the effective use of these two techniques, Nash is able to control the symptoms and live a relatively normal life. This suggests a high level of communication competence. While many might suggest that Nash has low communication competence, this essay will show that Nash's communication competence is actually exceedingly high, with this explaining why he is able to control his condition.

Before considering how Nash uses self-talk and perception checking to overcome schizophrenia, it is necessary to describe the nature of Nash's schizophrenia. Nash suffers from paranoid schizophrenia and experiences several major symptoms. The first symptom that occurs is delusions of persecution, which refers to a belief that everyone is against you. This symptom shows itself in Nash's belief that there are conspiracies against both himself and his country. The second symptom that occurs is delusions of grandeur, which refers to a belief that you are crucially important in some way. This is seen in the way that Nash believes that he is responsible for saving his country against the conspiracies. Nash imagines that there are codes hidden in newspapers and magazines and that he must identify the codes and pass on the information to save his country. The third major symptom seen is hallucinations, which refers to imagining people and events while considering them real. Nash's hallucinations include his college roommate and his daughter. Nash's hallucinations also include his imagined boss from the Department of Defense. Nash also imagines various other things, including seeing dilapidated and empty buildings as secret headquarters, seeing an abandoned letterbox as his drop-off point for the important information he compiles, and imagining that there is a computerized barcode in his wrist.

Now that the symptoms of Nash's paranoid schizophrenia have been described, the way he manages the symptoms can be considered. One of the important points to note is that Nash never actually cures his schizophrenia. His symptoms continue and he has delusions. The difference that occurs is that he learns to ignore the symptoms and identify his delusions as not being real. This occurs via a perception checking approach. This approach is first identified when Nash is informed that he has schizophrenia and that his imagined life is not real. After initially denying the truth of this, one of the first ways he finds out real information is by scratching out his own skin in an attempt to identify the electronic barcode device that he imagined had been implanted in his wrist. When he cannot find this device, this serves as evidence that his beliefs have been based on delusions. This is a form of perception checking because it involves checking what he perceives with what he can really see. While this experiment provides some evidence, it does not convince him entirely and is not enough to allow him to control his schizophrenic symptoms. The breakthrough occurs when Nash considers the people he sees in his delusions. In doing so, he identifies a discrepancy in relation to his roommate's daughter, where he realizes that she has never aged. This serves as the evidence that convinces Nash that the people he considered real are delusions. This is another form of perception checking, where he is able to logically analyze what he perceives as true. In doing so, even though Nash can still see the people, he is able to recognize that they are not real. With this conclusion reached, he teaches himself to ignore the people. One of the important points in regards to this is that by ignoring the people he imagines, he is also able to control the other symptoms. It was noted that Nash also has delusions of persecution and delusions of grandeur. These two other major symptoms occur via his imagined boss from the Department of Defense. As long as he is able to ignore him and accept that he is not real, Nash is also able to conclude that there is no conspiracy and that he is not important in saving his country. The next important point in regard to Nash's use of perception checking is that he is able to use his identified delusion to control any future ones. This is seen at one point where Nash walks out of a classroom and meets a new person. He then asks the new person if they can see his delusional friends. When the person replies that they cannot, he knows that the new person is real and not a new delusion. This shows how Nash is able to use his known delusions to determine whether future perceptions are real or imagined. In this way, perception checking is able to completely control his schizophrenia. In short, he still has schizophrenia since the delusions continue. But he is able to control the symptoms because he recognizes them as delusions.

It is also seen that Nash uses self-talk to control his schizophrenia. Self-talk refers to the internal conversations we have with ourselves. The first way that Nash uses this is seen when Nash originally begins to control his schizophrenia. Nash is seen talking to the people of his delusions and telling them he is going to ignore them. Nash is also seen saying goodbye to them. For the screen, this is presented as an actual conversation taking place. However, since the people that Nash is talking to only exist in his head, this is really a form of self-talk. Nash is talking directly to the delusional parts of himself and telling himself that he is going to ignore them from now on. It must also be noted that in the film it is shown as if there is only one event involving self-talk. However, it only appears this way because the film only presents the turning point in a way where the self-talk becomes a visual part of the film. In reality, Nash's self-talk is continual. Every time he sees the people of his delusions, he is telling himself to ignore them. This establishes that Nash uses self-talk to effectively control the symptoms of his schizophrenia.

In considering the outcome for Nash, it is observed that he uses perception checking and self-talk effectively to control and manage his schizophrenia. It is seen that he initially has extreme symptoms, including long-term and detailed delusions. Shock treatments and medications are initially used in an attempt to control the condition. However, it is observed that Nash loses everything that matters to him, including his mathematical ability. After Nash decides to find a new way to deal with the problem, he effectively manages to completely control the symptoms and live a relatively normal life. This shows how effective Nash's self-talk and perception checking are. In turn, this shows that Nash has a strong internal communication competence. This means that he manages to communicate with himself extremely effectively. This occurs with Nash's self-talk where his internal communication is strong enough to consistently allow him to ignore his delusions. This is also seen with Nash's perception checking, where he is consistently able to question what he perceives to determine whether or not it is real. He is then able to communicate this information to himself, with this communication clear enough that always understands what is real and what is not. This shows that Nash actually has strong communication competence.