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A Mind and a Madness: “Chaos is just around the corner”
“Much Madness is divinest Sense—
To a discerning eye….”
-Emily Dickinson (Nasar, 1998, p.333)
According to Mikhail Gromov, Nash would say, “Chaos is just around the corner”
(Nasar, 1998, p.158); in his life, this is completely true. Sylvia Nasar portrays the life
experiences of John Forbes Nash Jr., a genius who underwent a severe mental illness. Although
he spent a long period of time confined to his paranoid delusions and irrational thoughts, he
overcame his disease, a feat that many schizophrenics never accomplish. Nasar writes a
compelling true story called A Beautiful Mind, and Nash has a life overflowing with a rich
Image derived from: www.umpa.enslyon.fr/~cvillani/solutions.html
storyline of not only his battle with an
illness, but also a battle with mathematical genius, love,
special friends, and a story of his overcoming something that is usually bigger than the person it
encompasses. There is an abundance of evidence that leads toward a concrete psychological
conclusion in this book. The summary, evaluation, and review of his character throughout the
work help to come to these realizations.
In the first chapter, Nasar brings together some stories and accounts of Nash’s life as a
child growing up in Bluefield, West Virginia. According to Nasar (1998), “his great passion was
experimenting,” and “a neighbor recalls Johnny rigging the Nash telephone to ring with the
receiver off.” He didn’t have many friends growing up and he also had “a lack of interest in
childish pursuits” (p.32). This worried his parents so they encouraged him to participate in
things like boy scouts. He lived a small town life with two educated parents and a sister named
Martha. There was no history in the Nash family of mathematical prowess, his mother was
literary and his father was an engineer. Nash found escape in his work at school; a high school
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chemistry teacher described writing a problem on the board and “John wouldn’t move. He would
stare at the formula on the board, then stand up politely and tell us the answer. He could do it all
in his head. He never even took out a pencil or a piece of paper” (Nasar, 1998, p.38). When Nash
graduated high school, he won a full scholarship, and aspired to be an engineer like his father.
When Nash went to Carnegie, he discovered his passion for math. He was worried about
something during his final time at Carnegie, and even after going to graduate school at Princeton,
the draft. “He hated any thought that his personal future might be hostage to forces outside his
control and he was obsessed with ways to defend himself against any possible threats to his own
autonomy or plans” (Nasar, 1998, p.47).
Nash loved Princeton, and he met some friends there that were not only just as awkward
as he was then, but would also be essential to his attempts for
recovery from his mental illness in the future. According to Nasar
(1998), “he seemed to be enjoying himself immensely. A profound
dislike for merely absorbing knowledge and a strong compulsion to
learn by doing is one of the most reliable signs of genius… He was
obsessed with learning from scratch. Milnor recalled ‘It was as if he
wanted to rediscover, for himself, three hundred years of
Image derived from:
www.princeton.edu/mudd/new
s/faq/topics/nash.shtml
mathematics’” (p.69). He was also very close to the famous
personality of Einstein while at Princeton, and often watched him walking along the street and
wondered how a conversation with him might go over (he eventually confronted Einstein about a
theory he was trying to prove, and asked for thoughts).
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Another interesting thing that Nash enjoyed was the playing of different games in
Princeton. He played Kriegspiel, chess, go, and other games and would often trick his peers by
pretending to have made a mistake, and then take the game for a win. He also ended up making
up a game called “Nash” or “John”, which was very famous in the common room. Later when
picked up by the Parker Brothers, the game was officially called “Hex” (Nasar, 1998). While
Nash was at Princeton, he also wrote a paper that would in turn let him win the Nobel Prize in
Economics in 1994, on non-cooperative
game theory. After what he called a
“wasted summer”, with studying for his
generals, a “storm of ideas” sent him on
his way to produce his paper on game
Image derived from: www.swarthmore.edu/.../Hex/history.html
theory (Nasar, 1998, p.93). Nash was
also fond of pranks and games with other students. A roommate of one of Nash’s friends became
the center of pranks by him. One, as the roommate recalled, was “to unscrew the electric light
bulb in the bathroom. There was a glass shade under the bulb, which he filled with water. We
could easily have gotten electrocuted. Did he intend to electrocute me? I’m sure he didn’t intend
to” (Nasar, 1998, p.101).
After Princeton, Nash went on to go to RAND, a civilian think tank. His reputation was
proven to the other members, as he showed his unique problem solving manners. A man from
RAND said, “He reinforced RAND’s idea that mathematicians were a bit crazy” (Nasar, 1998,
p.114). He was considered a bit childish by some, always playing clever jokes on his colleagues.
After a while at RAND, he was confronted by the draft once more, only this time more directly.
He did everything he could to get out of it, and he did, but his paranoia over the subject would
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make the idea of the draft prominent in his illness later. He soon became an instructor at MIT, so
he could do research there. He hated teaching, and he made his students work very hard to earn
their grades in his classes. He often put classic unsolved problems on exams just to spite the
instructors and students
Another major stepping stone for Nash was his “special” friendships with men. Along
with other escapades, he experimented with his sexuality with a man named Jack Bricker, with
whom he had a relationship while having another relationship with a woman, Eleanor Stier, who
bore his first child. She hoped that being pregnant would make Nash want to marry her, but he
never even showed interest in helping to pay for his son, John David’s expenses. He was often
mean to Eleanor, and didn’t show any signs of wanting to get married. When Nash met Alicia
Larde, Eleanor finally realized that it
wasn’t going to work out for her and
Nash. Along with this, Bricker and
Nash’s relationship ended as well. Alicia
Larde was a student in one of Nash’s
courses and soon became obsessed with
Nash, and was determined to get him.
Image derived from: johnnashjr.tripod.com/
She and Nash ended up getting married,
although it is not known whose idea it was to do so, and it was a mutual feeling more than a deep
love that brought them together at first (Nasar, 1998).
When Nash turned thirty in 1958, he not only felt a fear that the best years of his life were
over, he was upset that he had not received any recognition whatsoever for any of the amazing
accomplishments he had made. He had tried to solve one of the most notable problems in math,
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the Riemann Hypothesis, and by not succeeding; this added another layer to the factors that
would push Nash toward illness.
After the New Year of 1959 began, Nash had started talking strangely. “But none of this
was especially alarming or suggested outright illness, just another stage in the evolution of
Nash’s eccentricity… His conversational style had always been a bit odd” (Nasar, 1998, p.240).
Soon, however, Nash would have many delusions of things such as being the emperor of
Antarctica, he would also try to give up his citizenship of the United States and become a
refugee, not belonging to any country. He also “told Arthur Mattuck that he believed that there
was a conspiracy among military leaders to take over the world, that he was in charge of the
takeover” (Nasar, 1998, p.258). Nash wasn’t hostile in his delusions; he wanted to save the
world. He often wrote letters to ambassadors, the pope, the FBI (which weren’t ever received),
and always to friends, colleagues, and relatives, containing paranoid messages. One message was
a scrap of paper with “2+5+20+8+12+15+18+15+13=78” written on it (Nasar, 1998, p.300). One
time, when he and Alicia were at a friend’s, having tea and cookies, he put salt and pepper into
his tea and consequently and seemed to obliviously remark that his tea was awful (Nasar, 1998,
p.299). Nash recalled once that he thought he was “the left foot of God on earth” (Nasar, 1998,
p.275). According to John Mattuck, “He was obsessed with secret numbers. ‘Do you know the
secret number?’ he asked. He wanted to know if I was one of the initiated” (Nasar, 1998, p.258).
After he was laughed out of the auditorium because he was completely incoherent in his
words at a speech, Alicia decided that he needed hospitalization. After this, Nash had been in and
out of hospitals a few times, one stay included psychodynamic therapy, one insulin shock
treatment, and another involving medication (Thorazine) and therapy. Although most of the time
Nash would be well for a while, but he soon went back to his delusions and paranoia, a lot of the
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time having to do with politics, the draft, and other such ideas. He blamed Alicia for his
hospitalizations and was bitter about them, and these problems influenced Alicia to file for
divorce. Alicia, as well as Nash’s friends and colleagues, were always there for him, trying to
preserve his genius and to not let him be overcome by his illness. They were very afraid that if he
got treatment his mind would not be capable of his brilliance in mathematics anymore. While he
was in stages of remission he produced some papers that were published and well looked upon,
which was encouraging to some of his friends and family, as well as a hint at his rational
capabilities (Nasar, 1998).
The best part of Nash’s journey in illness was his time at Fine Hall in Princeton in the
70s. He was granted permission to work there, and for a while he would write strange equations
and questions on the boards in the rooms. He was called “The Phantom of Fine Hall.” He, for a
long time, frequented there, and he was quiet mostly,
focusing on work, whether delusional or, eventually,
sane. He was taught how to use a computer and that
helped him focus better on his mathematical endeavors.
Gradually, without the help of medication, he started
working on more realistic problems and equations,
made more friends, and finally found himself in a state
of remission which he recalled started happening in the
70s and 80s. Nash’s remission was extremely rare in
the statistics of his mental illness.
He went on to live with his former wife, and his
Image derived from:
www2.polito.it/.../DilemmaPrigioniero.htm
relationship prospered with his second son. John
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Charles was born right as Nash started in on his mental illness, while he was in the hospital for
the first time. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994 in Game Theory after much effort
by admirers of his work, and he deserved it very much. John felt that he had finally gotten the
recognition he deserved, but at the same time, it made him realize that he is no longer who he
used to be and that there were lost years during his mental illness (although he continued to work
on mathematics even past when the book was published).
His son, John Charles, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder
when he was young, and even still, was growing up to love math just like his father as well (he
would be hospitalized many times). Now he maintains relationships with his family better, and
he tries to spend time with both of his sons. Alicia and John are clearly meant to be together,
they still fight, but they take care of their money, family, and relationship in a loving and caring
way. Nash wants Alicia to have the husband she couldn’t when he was ill (Nasar, 1998).
During Nash’s illness, if he would have voluntarily come to therapy, which in his case
would not have been likely, he would probably have complained of depression and anxiousness.
During his mental illness he would have times of sadness because of his flights of mind and
confusion, and when he tried to prove his irrational behavior it was not reinforced positively
because nobody really understood him. Nash’s feelings of anxiety would have been because of
his paranoid feelings about the draft and about FBI agents and such. Nash would probably
complain of sleeplessness, and he would externalize his problems onto Alicia, talking about her
forcefulness in getting him into treatment. Nash would probably have also shown insight into his
paranoid thoughts, although after he had been through the process of hospitalization a few times,
he would come to realize what people would look for to prove his sanity, and try to act sane to
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get away from treatment. He might also mention his feelings of wanting to hurt Alicia for what
she was putting him through.
When it comes to Nash and his behavior towards people in conversation, he was not
much different than he used to be, although he did have problems with talking nonsense to his
colleagues, often making up equations and theories that made no sense. Nash’s thought processes
were definitely disorganized, often relating numbers to things that would have no meaning
attached to them, which in my opinion was due to his strenuous work with numbers and questing
to figure out very difficult problems in mathematics. This all requires abstract thinking, so
placing numbers to things like names doesn’t, for a mind in his illness, venture too far off from
his norms. When it comes to Nash’s Hallucinations, he experienced mainly auditory ones, and as
a result of his auditory hallucinations he would attribute delusions to them. This is basic
rationality: if you hear something, rationally you think it is legitimate. Nash had three forms of
delusions: grandeur, persecution, and reference. There was also a period of time in Nash’s
disorder where he would make loose associations very plainly, but sometimes these loose
associations were more subtle and ignored sometimes. At some moments Nash would have
poverty of speech during his illness as well, but not to near the extent that he experienced an
overwhelming feeling of wanting to convey his ideas. Nash also suffered in that he had
withdrawn himself from his friends, family, and coworkers in order to spend his time with his
own thoughts or to just be on his own in general. There are many instances in the book where
most of these symptoms are shown fairly well.
When Nash was first experiencing signs of his illness, he was talking to one of his TAs
about a dissertation project. According to Nasar, “Nash embarked on a lengthy monologue that
was difficult to follow… It concerned threats to world peace and calls for world government.
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Nash seemed to be confiding… hinting that he had been asked to play some extraordinary role”
(Nasar, 1998, p.241). The TA felt very disturbed and considered informing the head of the
department, but they decided it was risky. This was one of the times when Nash was conveying
irrational thoughts as well as delusions. Nash’s disorganized thought process was conveyed
when “Nash began writing epigrams and epistles based on calculations in base 26. Base 26, of
course, uses twenty-six symbols, the number of letters in the English alphabet…. thus if the
calculation came out ‘right,’ it produced actual words.” According to a graduate student “he
would take the letters, assign numbers to each letter, get a very large number, and then analyze
that number for hidden meaning” (Nasar, 1998, p.336). Another of the symptoms of his disorder
was Hallucinations; Nash described them as being like “telepathic phone calls from private
individuals,” and that they seemed like they were “mathematicians opposed to my ideas” (Nasar,
1998, p.312).
Nash’s delusions were often based on what he used to feel a little weary about before his
illness. He was worried about the draft, and when he fled to Europe one time, he explained to
officials that he was afraid of the draft. When the foreign officials asked US officials about this
fear, it resulted in the answer that Nash was already way too old to be eligible for the draft
anymore. Nash’s already distracting and distorted feelings were showing up frequently in his
illness. His delusions of grandeur were, for example, when he felt like he was the “left foot of
God, and that God was walking on the earth,” according to Mattuck (Nasar, 1998, p.259). His
delusions of persecution were described as: “he felt himself to be at the epicenter of the universe,
with outer reality simply a projection of his mind (Nasar, 1998, p.275). These delusions were
very prevalent in his illness. It is said by Nasar (1998) that “self contradiction is also a
characteristic… every symptom being matched by a ‘countersymptom’” (p.275). Nash also had
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delusions of reference, which, in Nasar’s book, were obvious in the beginning of his disorder.
She wrote that he was aware of all of the people on campus who wore red neckties. Nash
explained: “I got the impression that people at MIT were wearing red neckties so I would notice
them. As I became more and more delusional, not only persons at MIT but people in Boston…”
(Nasar, 1998, p.242).
At the time Nash was laughed off of the stage, he was doing math that didn’t make any
sense to what he was talking about. Most of the people didn’t recognize this, it was the
mathematicians that did. He jumped back and forth from subjects that were not related. Donald
Newmann, an idol of Nash’s and a mathematician, said, “One word didn’t fit with the other…
Everybody knew something was wrong. He didn’t get stuck. It was his chatter. The math was
just lunacy” (Nasar, 1998, p.246). These loose associations first started appearing at the onset of
his illness as well. Nash’s poverty of speech occurred during his stay at fine hall in Princeton. He
wouldn’t talk and interact for long periods of time, which is one of the things that scared the
students. Some reported that he always had a blank stare.
A very important symptom for Nash was his social withdrawal, he did it in every
situation sought possible. Without help from the people in his life who cared for him and were
persistent, he may have ended up in a completely different situation today. Nash states, “I have
been sheltered here and thus avoided homelessness” (Nasar, 1998, p.340). There were times
when Nash would just decide to leave, even though people were offering him jobs to support him
left and right. One particular time, he was given a position at the Institute for Advanced Study,
where he was appointed a one year research job. Instead of accepting this offer, Nash moved
away from his friends to live in France and Alicia did not go with him.
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Many realizations can be derived from Nash’s life before his illness as to where the
nonbiological symptoms sprouted from. When it comes to his symptoms and stresses, he seems
to have obtained his illness from his crises in life. Nasar (1998) writes, “An individual’s
vulnerability to schizophrenia, researchers now believe, lies in his genes. But psychological
stresses are thought to be catalysts… Rather than a single trauma, a string of events from
childhood through young adulthood produces strains that mount like straws on the proverbial
camel’s back…” (p.188). I would also like to state that I believe the reason for Nash’s late onset
was because he didn’t develop like a normal child, with friends and social situations pushing him
into adulthood. He didn’t find a place he fit in and start becoming less immature until well into
his college life. Two stresses: teasing during awkward stages in his adolescence and his arrest for
indecent exposure (a bout with an officer where he tried to pick him up in a club bathroom,
which got him fired from RAND) seem to be smaller factors in his illness. A very relevant idea
though, was his being extremely unsettled by the fact that he could’ve gone to war instead of
pursuing his mathematical career. He made arguments, before he was ill, that he should not be
eligible for the draft because he was vital to the work on wartime strategies and processes. He
made it clear that he was much needed here, and his colleagues, bosses, and others helped to
keep him from the draft as well, for these very reasons. When Nash became ill, his paranoia was
partly instilled in his feelings of contempt for the idea of being drafted. His outburst in Europe
clearly demonstrates that. Along with this, his fight to gain recognition and be seen as a genius,
which had happened before his mental illness, and his disappointment at his faults on the ideas
he had on Riemann hypothesis contributed to what I would see as a factor of the mental
breakdown that came to be known as his illness. (As I write those words I feel compelled to
think, what if this was essentially a real mental breakdown because of his struggles, and maybe
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because of some biological factors, had turned into more than just a breakdown, a full-blown
illness?) Nash had also been interested in some aspects of politics when he was a student, and his
thoughts on economics reflected that. His reflections on politics during his mental illness seemed
to be becoming more of an obsession as he delved further into this state.
There is so much rationality that you can clearly pick out from his times of psychosis and
irrationality which astonishes me. “Nash’s lifelong quest for meaning, control, and recognition in
the context of his paradoxical self, was now reduced to a caricature… delusion is not just fantasy
but compulsion. Survival, both of the self and the world, appears to be at stake. Where once he
had ordered his thoughts and modulated them, he was now subject to their peremptory and
insistent commands,” was Nasar’s (1998) inadvertent take on my theory (p.274). Another quote
from Nasar (1998): “It is not true, however, that Nash had lost all contact with reality. The
clearest evidence that reality… pressed heavily… on him is that the frustrations of the situation
were beginning to oppress him. His expectant mood turned slowly… into one of deep
disappointment and depression” (p.276).
I also favor a belief that I am not sure many people have. Nash had made his life internal
rather than external. He had taken to ideas before his illness that had bordered on the line
between chaos and order. If you change 2+2=4 into 2+2=22, you have changed definiteness into
chaos. Maybe people who suffer from this disease have internalized themselves and kept
themselves situated in events that occur only in their mind, and when something disrupts their
world it takes over. Of course this is not always the case, it is no where near generalize-able. I
think in Nash’s situation he sat close to that edge in the first place, as with all geniuses, and he
must have had the biological accountability to acquire such a disease.
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Hindsight is 20/20, but if I were to put Nash into therapy, it would have been a meeting
from time to time to talk about struggles he is overcoming, and then other than that, let him try to
live and work in the places where he is most comfortable. Being in familiar and soothing places
was what worked for him in reality, and it is so miraculous and inspiring that it is what I would
feel compelled to give a schizophrenic patient. I would however, without this insight into Nash’s
specific case, have put him on the necessary medications for schizophrenia such as Risperdal or
Seroquel, and I would also provide a form of social therapy, with some cognitive insight. I think
the chance at Princeton for Nash to find himself back into his normal mathematical processes, by
not only being around it but being in the environment and in the mindset of somebody actually
working on real problems, helped him. With therapy, it seems like it would be difficult to keep
the fine line between the patient helping themselves and your own input balanced, because of the
fragility of the situation. I would try to help with interaction and social skills and compare
examples of rational and irrational thought with Nash. In Nash’s case I can’t help but think of
how he got better, and it was without medication. This makes me feel it would be better to
VERY slowly cut his dose down, but not to his knowledge, and see where that took me.
The strengths I see in John Nash are that he was able to solve so many problems and
mysteries of science with a sense of real effort and determination. Nasar (1998) wrote about his
genius personality and stated, “His tolerance for solitude, great confidence in his own intuition,
indifference to criticism—all detectable at a young age but now prominent and impermeable
features of his personality—served him well” (p.160). He has a wonderful mind and, in his
lifetime, was able to prove people wrong at the drop of a dime. Even if it took Nash a year or
more to prove himself in a mathematical bet, he would do it not only to spite the opponent, but to
prove his genius. Mainly that word: genius, and its implications, is the strength that makes me
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believe in him and see him as a hero. With his strength, determination, and genius came his
ability to pull himself back into the realm of reality and rationality. He tried, without drugs or
therapy, and he made it. To me that is extraordinary.
If I were to give Nash a diagnosis it would definitely be type I schizophrenia, and not just
because that was the diagnosis in the book, but because his symptoms were exactly verbatim to
the disorder. In accordance to the DSM IV checklist, he experienced hallucinations, delusions,
disorganized speech, disorganized behavior, and some negative symptoms. He was also
functioning way below his previous standards in life, and he had his disease for many years
before overcoming it. There was actually talk in the book of his diagnosis being wrong, it is very
interesting, to accurately portray the ideas, Nasar (1998) writes:
“Absent a rediagnosis based on Nash’s psychiatric records, no absolutely definitive
answer is possible. Psychotic symptoms alone, psychiatrists now agree, ‘do not a
schizophrenic make,’ and distinguishing between schizophrenia and bipolar illness
when symptoms first appear remains difficult… there are striking reasons for
believing that Nash’s diagnosis was, in fact, correct and that he is one of a very small
number of individuals who suffered a long and sever course… to experience a
dramatic remission… The fact that Nash’s younger son has also been diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder is strong evidence… The
duration and severity… his inability to do work that was… the principal passion of
his life, and his withdrawal from human contact, is also powerful evidence.”
Nash, according to Nasar (1998), has talked of being “preoccupied by delusions, of being unable
to work… he has defined it as an inability to reason” (p.351).
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As a final thought, I believe this book was incredibly insightful and fun to read, although
not being educated in economics has led to not understanding certain parts and details in the
writing. I believe that Nasar was the perfect person to write this, and she was very devoted to her
work. I feel this way because of her ability to come up with a concrete story that reads very well
in comparison to the stereotypical biography, and with the fact that she did research into the
psychological perspective of the reading and conveyed it in a very educated manner. With Nash
not being fictional, but a real struggler, I think it was an accurate portrayal of his mental illness. I
believe that with schizophrenia, it is hard to associate his experiences with different people
because the causes, at least the non-biological ones, seem to be relatively dissimilar and person
to person. I seem to have only gotten vague ideas of what it would actually be like to experience
a patient like him and diagnose him, such as the idea of stressful factors leading to its onset.
There also wasn’t much talk about biological causes of his schizophrenia because there was a
lack of research in that field in that time period. Finally, I feel as though by reading this I will
tend to hold the disease in high regard, because he is a hero to me, and I will have to live with the
fact that all schizophrenics aren’t going to be as marvelous or able to be held up on a pedestal
like Nash.
Reference List
Nasar, S. (1998). A beautiful mind. New York, NY: Touchstone.