Paranoid schizophrenia is portrayed in the movie

Running head: A BEAUTIFUL MIND: PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER ANALYSIS
A BEAUTIFUL MIND: PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER ANALYSIS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1A BEAUTIFUL MIND: PSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDER ANALYSIS
1. Paranoid schizophrenia is portrayed in the movie. The biographical film focuses on the
life of John Forbes Nash Jr. who is a Nobel Prize winning mathematician and showed
clear indications of mental illness which was diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia.
2. The symptoms of John Nash’s paranoid schizophrenia can be seen throughout the movie.
The movie gives insight into the fact the individuals suffering from paranoid
schizophrenia have trouble differentiating between the real and imaginary. The delusional
thinking of John’s that he has been invited to Pentagon for cracking the encrypted
telecommunications of the soviet enemies and Nash sees himself deciphering code
mentally. John’s stimulating hallucinations makes his regular tasks uninteresting and is
pleased when new assignment is given to him by William Parcher, imaginary supervisor
of John Nash from Department of Defense, USA. Parcher offers Nash decoding tasks to
detect bomb which Soviets were hiding which is hidden in newspapers and magazines.
John Nash ends up obsessed looking for hidden patterns which he decodes and sends to
Parcher via a secret mailbox.
As John Nash is interested and motivated by the delusions of decoding more than his
regular tasks, he ignores his job and family and concentrates more in the delusions which
he is unable to recognize as unreal. The film tries its best to accurately represent
schizophrenia. John’s schizophrenia starts in his 20’s which is the normal age for the
onset of schizophrenia in most patients. The movie portrays his delusions, his social
awkwardness and reduced speaking as the common symptoms of the schizophrenia
(Milnor & Forbes, 2008). The symptoms are shown from the beginning of movie where
Charles, John Nash’s imaginary friend and roommate at Princeton University appears and
John is shown to crack a joke which offends other graduate students. He speaks less and
lacks emotion when he speaks which is another symptom of his mental illness.
Nevertheless, most of the symptoms are precisely showed, John Nash did not have