Psychological Disorders: A Beautiful Mind

Psychological Disorder Name Institution Psychological Disorder Part 1: The Disorder/Issue The movie A Beautiful Mind (2001) uses the character of Russell Crowe, who takes on the role of John Nash to describe a psychological disorder. The specific disorder that the movie described as portrayed by John Nash is paranoid schizophrenia. Paranoid schizophrenia is a psychological disorder that manifests through various symptoms as evident in the character of John Nash. The main symptoms of the disorder are paranoid delusions where the sufferer feels that other people are out to cause him or her harm and auditory hallucinations where a person hears voices (Chan & Chen, 2011). Paranoid schizophrenia, the symptoms of delusions makes an individual have strongly held beliefs when the reality shows otherwise. As the film begins, Nash delusions begins to manifest. When Nash joins the Princeton University, he was informed that he would be living alone. However, as he settles in his room, Charles Herman, who is a literature student joins him as his roommate. Charles becomes his best friend and confidant. After university, Nash gets an invitation to the Pentagon since he is a genius in mathematics and he helps the Pentagon crack an encrypted enemy code. Nash is able to crack the code mentally to the amazement of the other code-breakers. After his success in this project, a mysterious man named William Parcher, who saw Nash accomplish his assignment with Pentagon offers Nash an assignment with the United States Department of Defense. In this assignment, he goes through hundreds of newspapers looking for patterns that helps thwart the plot of the Soviet. Nash becomes extremely obsessed in finding these hidden clues and he even begins to believe that someone is following him as he delivers his results to Parcher in a secret mailbox. One night as he is delivering the results, he becomes part of a shootout with the Russians and from that day, he becomes increasingly paranoid and erratic. He constantly hides in his house with curtains drawn and fearing for his wife Alicia. Terrified, Nash tells Parcher to relieve him of his duties in the Department of the Defense but Parcher refuses and tells him if he quits he will be killed by the Russians. While visiting Princeton, Nash meets his former roommate Charles with his niece Marcee. A while later, while going to give a speech at Harvard University, Nash spots Russian agents in the audience and he tries to flee. However, he is captured, sedated, and sent into a psychiatric facility where Dr. Rosen informs Nash’s wife Alicia that Nash is suffering from Schizophrenia. Sparingly, it turns out that all that Nash was believing to be true are just delusions. Nash roommate at the University, Charles, the Department of Defense agent, Parcher, and even Charles’ niece Marcee are all imaginary. Nash was living alone and did not have a roommate. Nash also did not crack any codes, he was not hired by the Department of Defense, and all the results he was getting from the investigation he was putting it all in an unopened mailbox. There were no Russian agents that were following Nash and all his beliefs of being a highly sort code-breaker was all imaginary. Nash had irrational beliefs even after his wife Alicia told him...