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A Beautiful Mind 292

Posted by timothy from the nice-lobes dept.
Stella Daily writes: "The unlikely subject of Ron Howard's film A Beautiful Mind , based on the 1998 Sylvia Nasar book of the same name, is John Forbes Nash Jr., a mathematical genius whose doctoral thesis earned him a Nobel Prize -- and a schizophrenia patient whose illness kept him out of the academic community for decades. The John Nash of the film is a brilliant young man who doesn't quite fit in, ignores his classes, is gawky with women and, above all, is consumed with a desire for an original idea. It is easy to like this Nash, with his Southern drawl and his earnest demeanor, and to sympathize with him as he fights his way back from insanity." Stella explains below why things aren't quite that simple.
A Beautiful Mind
author Sylvia Nasar
pages 464
publisher Simon & Schuster
rating 9
reviewer Stella Daily
ISBN 0684819066
summary A beautifully written biography, more complex and troublesome than the film it inspired.

The John Nash of Nasar's biography, while less likable, is far more fascinating and multidimensional than his cinematic counterpart; he is a draft dodger, a vicious prankster (one practical joke of Nash's involved filling a light fixture with water, which could have electrocuted a hapless victim when he turned on the light), and an arrogant braggart.

Hollywood has whitewashed much from Nash's life; besides working to dodge the Korean War draft out of fears that it would hurt his career, Nash fathered an illegitimate son whom he refused to help care for, despite the fact that his own circumstances were far better than those of the child's mother. The woman he married, Alicia Larde, is portrayed in the film as the one and only love of Nash's life; no mention is made of their 1963 divorce. (Nearly forty years later, the couple remarried.) To read Nasar's biography is to discover fascinating episodes like Nash's stint in Europe, when he attempted several times to renounce his American citizenship and obtain political asylum, and his encounters with fellow patient and Pulitzer prizewinning poet Robert Lowell in a Massachusetts mental hospital.

The book is as absorbing a history lesson as it is a story; Nasar sets Nash's life beautifully in the context of his time. Nash's bisexuality, for example, was much more of an issue then than it would be now; while today many areas have laws against discrimination based on sexual orientation, in 1954 not only was it legal for employers to dismiss a homosexual employee, but any evidence of homosexuality was sufficient grounds to deprive a government employee of security clearance. Later, the reader learns of many once-credited treatments for mental illness, like insulin injections (thought to deprive the brain of sugar and thus kill off defective brain cells), colonic irrigation, and even "fever therapy," given by inoculating patients with malaria or typhoid. Nasar's description of the politics by which Nobel prizes are awarded, a process purposely shrouded in mystery by the various committees involved, is a particularly fascinating read. Her inclusion of these and other details paints a rich historical picture that's a pleasure to read.

The one thing missing from A Beautiful Mind is, of course, the voice of John Nash himself. Where possible, Nasar plucked quotes from his writings and the recollections of friends and colleagues, but Nash himself maintained, as he put it to a New York Times reporter, "a position of Swiss neutrality" toward his biographer. Throughout the extraordinary story of Nash's life -- his rapid rise to fame, his loves, his illness, his disappearance for decades from the academic community, and his recognition at last as a Nobel laureate, one wants to ask him, "What were you thinking?" Unfortunately, it's a question Nasar was unable to answer.

One true merit of the movie, so highly altered from Nash's real story (and, considered apart from the facts, it is both moving and interesting), is that it will undoubtedly inspire many to pick up Nasar's beautifully written biography. It's time to meet the real John Nash.

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A Beautiful Mind More

A Beautiful Mind

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  • Autobiography (Score:5, Informative)

    by sid_vicious ( 157798 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:08PM (#2901318) Homepage Journal
    I saw the movie, and it got me wondering about the real John Forbes Nash, Jr. He's got a short (but interesting) online autobiography here [nobel.se], although he skips over his schizophrenic years and focuses on his academic work.
    • An online biography by J J O'Connor and E F Robertson [st-andrews.ac.uk] covers some aspects left out of the autobiography on the Nobel site. The autobiography is interesting, though, for the way he expresses things.

    • Re:Autobiography (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JabberWokky ( 19442 ) <slashdot.com@timewarp.org> on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:26PM (#2901457) Homepage Journal
      He's got a short (but interesting) online autobiography here [nobel.se], although he skips over his schizophrenic years and focuses on his academic work.

      There was an interview with Sylvia Nasar on NPR yesterday (I think it was Fresh Air, meaning it should be online right now), and she seems to approve of the movie. As she puts it - when you write about a while person's life, you have to pick facets. When you compress it into a book, you have to pick and choose what to focus on. In the movie, they only had two hours, and chose to focus on the relationship Nash and his wife had. She also adds that she was at their second wedding last June (John Nash is 74 and very much alive), and that the wedding was merely a reaffirmation of a relationship that has always been a marriage. She said (and I'm badly quoting from memory: "John [Nash] called it a 'retraction of a mistake'. Something you would expect a mathematician to say". Apparantly they have been together these 40 years, with all the ups and downs that a long relationship with serious stress would be expected to have.

      It's important to remember that the focus of the movie needs to be tighter (less room to explore), but that the book *also* has to focus on certain aspects, and that it should not be taken as a 'more factual' account - in the HBO 'behind the scenes' piece "Inside A Beautiful Mind", they interview Crowe, but in the background of a few scenes, you can see an elderly couple in two chairs watching from near the director and camera - I wonder if that was Nash and his wife?

      --
      Evan

      • ..they interview Crowe, but in the background of a few scenes, you can see an elderly couple in two chairs watching from near the director and camera - I wonder if that was Nash and his wife?

        Hmmm... that's interesting, and could certainly be possible. But, I think I remember hearing that Crowe and Nash have never actually met - anyone have a link that verifies this?

      • Hero worship & makeover (Score:5, Insightful)

        by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Friday January 25, 2002 @02:55PM (#2902074) Homepage Journal
        I also heard Terri Gross interview Sylvia Nasar on Fresh Air yesterday and your quotes are about right.

        However I felt Sylvia Nasar's defense of the film's intentional disregard of John Nash's sexual history to be disingenuous. Yes he may be bi or gay or straight or it may have been a mistake or experimentation or whatever but the arrest had a profound affect on his life, one certainly relevant to the film.

        Frankly the author lost a great deal of creditability with me when she broke down in tears describing Nash's recent remarriage to his wife and kept babbling about how wonderful and beautiful a person he is. While biographers doubtless have opinions on their subjects I've never heard one get so maudlin or express such overt and unconditional adulation.

        It will be interesting to someday compare Nasar's Nash biography with another perhaps more objective one. In the meantime both this book and the film appear deeply flawed by their attempts to present overly sympathetic views of their subject.

        • It will be interesting to someday compare Nasar's Nash biography with another perhaps more objective one.


          I don't know about Nasar's current relationship with the Nash family, but her book is an incredible piece of detached journalism. It's highly detailed and meticulously referenced and it does not shy away from Nash's faults in the least. He is definitely portrayed warts and all. I'm not sure it would have been possible for Nasar to have been a more objective biographer.

      • The Fresh Air program segment with the interview with Sylvia Nasar is here [npr.org] (RealAudio).
    • Well, there is this book that's being reviewed in this story that you might be interested in... :-p
    • Now that you've read Nash's autobiographic blurb on the Nobel site, go read this letter on his personal web page at Princeton:

      Your paper on imbedding Riemannian manifolds [princeton.edu]

      Oops!

  • Nash in recent years... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dephex Twin ( 416238 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:11PM (#2901345) Homepage
    My girlfriend's father is an economics professor, and was excited to see him speak this year. It seems, however, that he is a shadow of what he once was.

    Apparently, his presentation was not terribly insightful. And when asked by an audience member about some of his famous work, he responded that he "doesn't remember any of that anymore."

    The entire event was very awkward for everyone in attendance. Here is a man who made some brilliant discoveries in his heyday that are very useful in game theory and economics. People come to hear him speak and it only displays how his mind has gone-- he can't even relive the old glory.

    mark

    • Actually, if you read the book... (Score:4, Informative)

      by melquiades ( 314628 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:21PM (#2901413) Homepage
      His presentations were pretty much always like that, even before the schizophrenia. He was a terrible speaker, disorganized and unclear, who gave the impression of babbling nonsense off the top of his head. He was also a terrible teacher, who bored his students out of their skulls. His presentations always made other mathematicians skeptical that he was actually generating any valid ideas at all -- until he managed to get them down on paper, and proved himself a genius.

      So I'm not sure that a bumbling presentation now is a sign that "his mind has gone".
      • I wasn't at this presentation, so I don't have all the details of what took place. The problem was not that his presentation was not well done-- the content of what he was talking about was not very insightful at all. I gathered he was no longer able to really understand the stuff he worked on years ago.

        The comments on the presentation weren't from some guy who thought the movie or book was really cool and wanted to see him-- he is also a professor who does research and was interested in Nash's insight.

        mark
        • The problem was not that his presentation was not well done-- the content of what he was talking about was not very insightful at all.

          Right -- the point is that even at the time he was generating these ideas, his talks gave the impression he had no insight, or no idea what he was talking about at all, or even that he was a crackpot. There are some quotes on this from the book (which I don't have here at work; sorry) from people who were excited about hearing something he was reputedly solving, went to hear his talk, and went away completely unimpressed and disappointed.

          It is possible that he's lost some of his mental sharpness, but to know that, we'd have to look somewhere other than his talks, since they never displayed that sharpness to begin with.
    • It seems, however, that he is a shadow of what he once was.

      And you're surprised? Nash was a mathematician. Mathematicians tend to do their best work before the they are 25 years old, and it's rare for a mathematician to make major discoveries after 40.

      Mathematicians have also had a long history of mental disorders; as my supervisor once said, "you can count on your fingers the number of sane great 20th century mathematicians". (which is just slightly worrying...)

      • Re:What did you expect? (Score:4, Funny)

        by KidIcarus ( 74147 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:43PM (#2901577)
        Mathematicians have also had a long history of mental disorders; as my supervisor once said, "you can count on your fingers the number of sane great 20th century mathematicians". (which is just slightly worrying...)

        I think it's worrying that a mathematician still needs to use his fingers to count...
      • This is completely not true. I several of the best mathematicians (my list is from the view of a computer scientist) of the 20th century were totally sane:
        • Hilbert (started the whole metamathematics thing)
        • Russell (this guy had a finger in every pie, from maths to science to politics to poetry, etc)
        • Brouwer (created the Intuitionist foundations for mathematics, in addition to the fixed point theorem used by Nash)
        • Heyting (popularized Intuitionism, founded inituistionist logic)
        • Weyl
        • Church (lambda-calculus, effectively computable implies general recursive)
        • Turing (automata theory, AI, etc...)
        • Curry (fixed up the lambda-calculus, Curry-Howard isomorphism)
        • Rosser (Church-Rosser property, symmetric forms of Godel's incompleteness theorem)
        • Kleene (Metamathematics, Recursive Function Theory, etc... wrote some really good textbooks too CHECK THEM OUT)
        • Gentzen (father of Structural Proof Theory with his sequent calculus and cut-elimination for proofs)
        • Godel (incompleteness proof, he got paranoid towards the end of his life, but then again, he had friends that were assasssinated by Nazi fanatics, and then the whole communism scare thing was enough to make anyone paranoid)
        • Girard (system F, linear logic, ludics, oh and he is still alive)
        I could go on, but listing more than 20 great 20th century mathematicians (sane or insane) is very difficult. I have only read so many biographies ;-) Anyway, there are orders of magnitude more sane great mathematicians than insane great mathematicians. The invarient amongst all of the great mathematicians is that they spent allot of time studying and researching mathematics. Therefore, to imply that genius and insanity go hand-in-hand is absurd! Genius and hardwork go hand-in-hand.

        Look at the great programmers of today like Linus and Carmack. Geniuses, yes, insane, no! Both do share one trait, and that is that they work almost everyday on their programming.

        It's just like saying that most body builders use roids. No, in fact, most body builders lift weights everyday.

        The fact is that the majority of the populus is too lazy to work with such focus on anything. Instead, they veg out in front of the TV, while the "greats" are working away at being great. Most aren't born with it, they earn it, which makes their greatness even more admirable.
    • Have you ever thought that sometimes you just don't want to talk about the past anymore? What was your girlfriend's father hoping for a 'Nobel' quality rant on genius, thus validation of the intellectual superiority of all present? If you want to move into the future think, if not collect baseball cards and talk to collegues about how cool you were at university.

    • I am an academic economist and saw Nash give two lectures a couple of years ago. The one talk was not bad, he was trying to pick up where he left off but didn't realize that some of his "new" ideas had already been developed by others while he was "absent." The second talk was pretty nutty, although not entirely out of the range of the nutty ideas you sometimes see in economic seminars.

      Here is one example of what he missed out on while he was mad. He had figured out that computers are now useful for numerical solutions to equations that would have been very difficult to characterize. However, his model had some greek letters in it and he thought that a computer could not ("of course") print out letters of a non-latin alphabet -- he was thinking of a simple typewriter style printer.

    • I have had the privilege of hearing a few physics Nobel Laureates lecture and was struck by how out of touch they were with the state-of-the-art, but now I realize that maybe it's not because their genius is deserting them, but it's because the body of human knowledge is expanding so quickly that even they can't keep up with it.
      • I have had the privilege of hearing a few physics Nobel Laureates lecture and was struck by how out of touch they were with the state-of-the-art, but now I realize that maybe it's not because their genius is deserting them, but it's because the body of human knowledge is expanding so quickly that even they can't keep up with it.

        Nobel prizes tend to be given for "life's work", don't they? Also, they only tend to be given once it becomes apparent that a particular idea or body of work can and will change the world. This can take a little longer in physics than in other disciplines, as it needs to be externally verified; either by other people catching up with the ideas and approving of them, or engineers working out how to build something based on them :)

        Besides, spend enough of your life using a mode of thought (paradigm, maybe, in the Kuhnian sense) that you yourself have originated (seems to be a common attribute of genius) and you'll probably find it pretty hard to shift from that position when it becomes necessary to understand later work...
  • It's quite unfortunate that it happened. So many times people's works are not judged by the content, but by who wrote it. Perhaps it's too much effort to actually peruse the work and digest the content, so people rely on arguing ad hominem on its worthiness.

    It's refreshing though that he actually did earn the Nobel Prize that he deserved.

  • Film vs. Book (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ron Howard has said from the very beginning of the project that the film was not a mirror of the book. He didn't make it that way for a reason. Now, his reasoning may not be good, but I think this case of book-to-film is different than most. He did not hide out somewhere pretending to make the film based on the book, he was very public about the inentions and the process.
    • It sat badly with me; I'd say that if you wish to make "a film about genius and madness" (as Howard has said) without showing much of the true nature of the particular [un]fortunate vessel therefor, then don't bother giving the character the same name as a real and moderately public person.

      That is to say, don't capitalise on the "true story" boost the story gets while you simultaneously try to distance yourself from the true story.

  • Sugar coating. *Mini-spoiler* (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:14PM (#2901361)
    Yeah the movie was too much of a "feel good" one for me to believe that it was all true. So I did some reading on the net about him and found out about how RAND fired him for suspected homosexuality, and his illegitimate son.

    I also thought the movie portrayed him a little too "Forrest Gumpish" like he was retarded in some way but they never made any reference to it.

    The bad thing thing was how the movie strung you along to believe that he was actually sane the whole time. Even the whole scene where Nash was being shot at while speeding along in the car. I know its hard to imagine, but it they made it seem real enough.

    I guess when you question how a scizophrenic person can imagine such strange things and believe them, I think about when humans dream. How many strange dreams have you had that were totally unbelievable yet you didn't question them in the dream? A person with this disorder just has part of their dreams occurring during the day while awake.

    I guess if they told the real story of John Nash, you'd not like him as much, and Russle Crowe wouldn't be getting so many accolades for this movie if he portrayed John Nash as a bisexual, draft dodging, dead-beat dad.
    • The bad thing thing was how the movie strung you along to believe that he was actually sane the whole time. Even the whole scene where Nash was being shot at while speeding along in the car. I know its hard to imagine, but it they made it seem real enough

      I for one am getting tired of the "Surprise Ending" theme thats been going on since the sixth sense (or fight club, whichever was first). It was good the first few times.. It's getting old now. Find a new hook or go back to mindless entertainment. I vote for the former.

      Occasionally I like a nice almost-mystery, such as with K-PAX and Contact. But thats not exactly the same thing.

      ABM was good - but part of me wishes that they would have structured it differently.

      But, a-la Boys Don't Cry vs. The Brandon Teena story, i'm sure it won't be long before there is a John Nash documentary.. or maybe there will be one on the deeveedee.
      • I for one am getting tired of the "Surprise Ending" theme thats been going on since the sixth sense...

        Sure. But then, I actually liked this particular rendition; what was clever about it was that I knew that this movie was about schizophrenia. I spend the beginning of the movie thinking to myself. "Gosh, this has gone on for a while, when does he become schizophrenic?" LOL. Got me.

        C//

      • I for one am getting tired of the "Surprise Ending" theme thats been going on since the sixth sense (or fight club, whichever was first). It was good the first few times.. It's getting old now.

        I've noticed the same trend. The first time I can recall seeing it was in "Usual Suspects" with the whole Kaiser Soze ending. As you said, it was certainly interesting the first few times, but now I have almost come to expect it.

        Having said that, I have to defend "Beautiful Mind" in this context. [Spoiler ahead.] His schizophrenia was unearthed around half-way through the movie, and was such an important part of his character that Howard couldn't have presented it successfully other than to make the audience believe it, too. So while I agree with you that this "gotcha" trend has become common, I don't think the same applies to this movie.

        - Rev.

    • Re:Sugar coating. *Mini-spoiler* (Score:4, Informative)

      by aschneid ( 145265 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:25PM (#2901451)
      I also thought the movie portrayed him a little too "Forrest Gumpish" like he was retarded in some way but they never made any reference to it.


      As someone who is married to a psychologist, my wife came from this movie feeling that this movie very accurately portrayed a paranoid schizophrenic. The reason he seems a little "Forrest Gumpish" is that is the way schizophrenics act, both due to the illness and the medications that they are on.

      I also liked how they made you believe these people were very real for so long. This is how a schizophrenic feels, and I think Ron Howard was trying to relay this sense of realness that a schizophrenic has.

      Andrew
  • I read the biography first, then went to see the movie. I found the biography interesting and detailed...my favorite part was when Nash replied to an offer by the University of Chicago by saying he was next in line to become emperor of Antarctica. The movie *is not* the story of Nash's life. It is a Hollywood story, cleaned of all extraneous plot and simplified for the screen. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it, even with its extreme omissions and changes. The book and the movie are two entirely different things, don't go into one expecting the other.

  • Review is right on target (Score:5, Insightful)

    by melquiades ( 314628 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:16PM (#2901374) Homepage
    Indeed, it is an excellent biography, and this review is right on target: the Nash of the book is far more multidimensional and interesting than any Hollywood creation could be.

    Something the book draws out wonderfully is the tension between Nash's tremendous virtue as a thinker, and the fact that he was a really dislikable person for much of his life. His attitude generally seemed to be that his intelligence was the sole measure of his merit as a human being, and should open the doors of the world to him regardless of whether or not he was a pleasant or decent person. The places where he was right and wrong about this -- and how that changed during the "lost years" of schizophrenia -- is a fascinating cautionary tale for all of us fringy geeky types, whether fighting mental illness or not.

  • I expected something more involving from the film (Score:4, Interesting)

    by darkwhite ( 139802 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:16PM (#2901378)
    After two weeks of reading praise in the reviews, I finally went to see the movie. I must say I didn't like it, possibly because it hits too close to home.

    Watching Nash's life suddenly reveal itself as an empty shell, a madman's delusion, was too painful. It creeped me out so much that I lost interest in the rest of the film and the recovery to normal life that he made. I guess I became afraid of what it would be like to lose control of your mind in this manner, a very disturbing perspective.

    Needless to say, beyond the amount forced upon me by the movie, I could not sympathize with the character much because of the pride and prejudice and contempt and even, I would say, malice in his competitiveness (while he had it), that he touts.

    To summarize, I felt sorry for him, but even more repulsed by him, and thus by the movie.

    As for his portrayal as a mathematician, it had both parts that I liked and those that I didn't. There wasn't much specifics to it though, predictably.
    • You say that you felt sorry for him, but repulsed at the same time.

      The movie got a reaction out of you, and apparently a strong one at that. I think that in a way, that was the intention, and by getting that reaction out of you, it accomplished it's objective.

      I, too, had many of the same feelings toward Nash. However, by actually having those feelings, I believe the movie was good. If I didn't feel that way towards the character, I would consider the movie "a bad movie".

      In essence, I think the movie ROCKED! 'Grats to Russell Crowe and the rest of production for making me both sympathize, admire and loathe Mr. Nash. What a ride.
  • The way he was portrayed in the movie, there is absolutely no way that such a man could score a woman as beautiful as Jennifer Connelly!
  • I have seen the movie, it ok , more enttertaining when you watch it as FICTION, which basically it is.

    Only hollywood could turn a Bisexual, Schitophrenic, Deadbeat dad into someone you fell for, or the Nazi's propoganda machine did with that whole crew of loonies.

    Its amazing, it sells so sugar coat it. I doubt many would have wanted to see Crowe portay the REAL Nash.

    BUT in this country, and much of the world, the CONSUMER rules, who wants to see a movie about an asshole no matter how smart he is.

  • It's really sad... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:27PM (#2901464)
    when people compare books to movies. I've never come across a single instance where someone said, "Man, the movie was SO much better than the book!" It's intellectual snobbery at its finest. So next time you go to a Mozart concert, make sure you bring the sheet music, and as you're walking out, loudly proclaim, "That performance was NOTHING like the score! The London Symphony left out critical intricacies of Mozart's work!"
    • Off the top of my head, what about "Hannibal"?
    • Forrest Gump
      The Godfather

      Some people say 2001. I'd argue for Jurassic Park.
    • Dead Man Walking, the book, is half about the two convicts Sister Helen Prejean "adopts" on death row. Although not a professional writer, Prejean's story is quite interesting, even though I had no previous interest about capital punishment. The other half of the book (interspersed) is a listing of facts and figures and data about which states have more prisons, effectiveness of different procedures, etc. I began to skip those parts. Overall, I liked the book, even with it's faults.

      The movie is totally different. Where the book focused on facts and a literal storytelling, the film concentrated entirely on the Sister's relationship with the death-row inmate (a composite of the two real people.) Susan Sarandon rightly won the Oscar for this role.

      The movie is emotional, the book is factual, but they both fit together perfectly as two viewpoints on the same story. Amazing!
    • when people compare books to movies. I've never come across a single instance where someone said, "Man, the movie was SO much better than the book!"

      What about all those awful novelizations of Hollywood pap? The book of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial was terrible, and I'm sure that many more thinly disguised scripts are out there...

      Guess this just means that there are very few original works that play well in multiple media :)
  • They couldn't figure out whether to be a romance or a documentary, and so it ended up being too empty and shallow for a romance and not focused/interesting enough for a documentary or biography type of narration.

    Very disappointing.
  • This is a great movie from what I hear, but it makes one simple mistake:

    It makes people with mental illness think they can also be like Nash and 'fight back'.

    This isn't the case, and gives people an unrealistic look into the life of someone who is mentally ill. As an advocate, I find it kind of hard when the public is shown a movie like this. They think... "why can't `they` all do like he did?"

    A mistake indeed. Not that a story where someone overcomes a great hurdle is bad, but it's dangerous in this case.

    Next movie: A person who has AIDS, but fights it and somehow beats it. Then everyone will think it's possible.

    [Before you flame me, I'm not alone on this issue. Also, if you want to flame me, look around and see why someone like me has to become an advocate.]

    • Re:Mental Illness and the media. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by alpinist ( 96637 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @02:10PM (#2901781)
      Quite insightful. It's true, and sad, that even in the 21st century, people harbor views of mental illness that date back to the 19th century. People do believe that a person can 'fight back' or 'snap out of' schizophrenia. People also believe clinical depression is about being 'sad' and a person just needs to 'cheer up'. These are just a couple of the more common examples.

      There is a negative stigma attached to mental illness that makes the public's perception of HIV look flattering. Imagine the backlash if the media started calling AIDS the 'gay cancer' again. Hollywood may be ignorant, but in perpetuating this stereotype of the mentally ill as people who just need to 'help themselves' they are doing real harm to real people.
    • First, the movie showed that he was on meds and when he wasn't wandered around Princeton suffering from delusions.

      Secondly, lots of people do "fight back". Many people don't have to live the rest of their lives over medicated and with marginal living skills due to mental illness, just like many people can rehab from other critical illnesses. It depends on the severity of the disease and the quality of care. I deal everyday with a number of diagnosed schitozphrenics (including myself) who have "fought back". Many of these people, including myself, have achieved college degrees and live as perfectly productive members of society.

      What seems unfortunate to me is a system that all to frequently throws massive amounts of medication at a problem and doesn't spend enough time on intensive cognitive therapy to help the individuals who can return to society to live productive and high quality lives. Instead, many of these individuals end up socialized to institutions and heavy doses of mind altering drugs.

      There are people who have more severe problems than others. Just like some people will have operable cancer and some people will die from it.
      But a diagnosis of paranoid schitzophrenic isn't a life sentence for many people. I don't see a problem with a movie, even if it is obviously a fictionalized and sugar coated account, that shows that some people can learn to work around their problem and be productive memebers of society.
      • Ok.

        There are groups who spend time on 'intensive cognitive therapy'. There is also groups who over medicate.

        But the message of this movie has become one of 'pull your self up by the boot straps' and get on with it! NAMI has said they support it, but other groups do not.

        Sure, not every diagnosis of p.schitzophrenia is a life sentence. But not every person has the strongest degree.

        But let's also remember that there are more than just one mental illness. Even clinical depression can be a life sentence. I, myself, suffer from rapid cycling bi-polar disorder. It has in effect ruined my life. To say that there are people who don't need treatment is to trivialize the ones who do.

        Sure, they throw drugs at you and see which ones stick. What else can they do when not enough is known? We have a mental health crisis in America, and Bush kicked out the Surgeon General who actually cared.

        Nine times out of ten you can blame your 'system' on stigma and the people who spread it, low or no funding, and reluctance to do anything.

        I used to buy into the argument that being medicated would rob me of my life. But that got me where I am now. I've had the worst time, I've lost everything I've worked for, and can't get a job. Sure, I can get one, but I can't hold it.

        I thought I should 'get over it' and not become a drugged up citizen. I'm now finally with a county clinic and maybe getting my life back on my own.

        Read this:
        http://www.bipolarbrain.com/statistics.html

        [i thought he had delusions at the nobel prize ceremony?]

    • Re:Mental Illness and the media. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dragons_flight ( 515217 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @03:00PM (#2902105) Homepage
      I too have experience with mental illness both personally, and in those around me.

      I find that I must disagree with you in the strongest possible terms. I believe the movie's image of him fighting back is entirely appropriate. A certain degree of will to be sane and "fighting back" is absolutely neccesary if someone with significant mental illness is going to regain the semblance of a normal life.

      Did the movie make it look easy? Certainly not from the years fo delusions and struggles I saw. Did it make it look like he did it unsupported? Only slightly, but he clearly recieved the full support of his wife and significant tolerance and support from the Princeton mathematics department. It does make it look like he resists drugs, and it also shows him falling back into his delusions. At the end of the movie he also mentions taking "newer medications", so despite his internal struggle we aren't to believe it's not entirely unmedicated.

      Maybe it would be okay to ask "why can't `they` all live a life of horrible struggle and poverty, punctuated with episodes disconnected from reality?" Cause that's the image I got from the movie, and by no means does it seem glamorous.

      I am grateful to John Nash (the real one) for showing with his life that schizophrenia is not a death sentence, and that people can take an active role in reasserting reality in their lives. An awareness of the disease and a will to fight it is an important hurdle in most mental illness. Would I recommend fighting without clinical help and medication? Of course not, but more important than that is the recognition and support of others, and while Nash did the unorthodox thing he did not do so completely alone.

    • I really have a low tolerance for this sort of thing. I'm not going to talk about my own diagnosis, because that comes across as whiny. However, in 1999 my ex-wife and I started what was only the second program in the United States to teach English to residents who were not native speakers of English. Most of these were schizophrenics.

      Our success was phenomenal, at least prima facie. The discharge rate amongst our students was twice the discharge rate of the hospital at large. Most of these were long-term residents. All students who attended more than one class achieved dramatically improved functioning. One woman had a chronic undifferentiated schizophrenic who also had a seizure disorder, had been there for four years, and was understandable neither in English nor in her native Spanish came to one lesson, and after that, we recieved reports that she was much more understandable. It was a very simple class, with a simple "Hi, how are you" dialogue. She went out and enlisted other residents to practice the dialog with her.

      Now, of course, this remains at the anecdotal level. The program was effectively killed by administration after a couple of months, though this was after we had gotten the Florida Department of Children and Families volunteer of the year award.

      It could also be said that I'm biased. We did, of course, recieve reports from other people who weren't part of the program, but as someone who was a research scientist for 13 years and has been active in the skeptic movement, I am aware of those dangers. On the other hand, there is also a danger of dismissing something casually. In any event, I don't think it can be rationally said that it isn't at least promising.

      One would, ideally, try this sort of thing at a larger scale, doing extensive followups to test the long-term effects if any and also trying to find out just what it was about the teaching that was effective if it was. What we did was a mixture of the European Direct method, in which both my ex and I got trained and certified, and the Dartmouth method, in which I had taught German some years earlier. Both methods belong to the class of "intensive" methods, and perhaps subjecting a schizophrenic to that kind of highly social rigor has unexpected side-effects. I don't know, but it would be interesting to study.

      My best guess is that we could do a hell of a lot better than we're doing. As the administrative reaction highlights, people don't want this. They want to look at the "green monkey" and go eeeew and put him into a warehouse run by sadists. (Up until 1991, at this hospital, any resident who tried to bite a staff member had all their teeth extracted as punishment. If anything, Ken Kesey pulled his punches. The reality is way worse.)

      To talk about the dangers of giving people "false hope" seems to me a rationalization. Sure, Hollywood isn't realistic. The guy in Awakenings, in real life, didn't do much but masturbate. OK. But still, the danger of squelching real hope which spurs real effort that sometimes works is much greater.

      • You so missed my point.

        Sure, you helped people. But did they do it own their own? My point is that people with Mental Illness, like myself, can't always just 'get on with it'.

        Sure, they can recover. But not many just wake up one day and say "I'm going to beat this today" and go back to bed 'ok'.

        Read my other posts. I thought I could help myself, on my own. It doesn't work. It didn't for me. It made things 29349237593205 times worse.

        Luckily I found [the much hidden] local clinics where I can get help. Med's aren't free, but @ 50/month I can get a few people to help out.

  • His bisexuality (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Brian_Ellenberger ( 308720 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:37PM (#2901534)
    While others like Andrew Sullivan probably disagree, I think his bisexuality was intentionally kept out the film because the producers of the movie did not want to associate bi/homosexuality with mental illness.

    Brian Ellenberger
    • That's actually a really good point. Someone mod this up. That's the exact type of thing Hollywood would do just so they don't have to take any REAL chances.
    • I think his bisexuality was intentionally kept out the film because the producers of the movie did not want to associate bi/homosexuality with mental illness.

      I think it's more likely that they didn't want to associate homosexuality with Russell Crowe.

  • Computer science roots in Beautiful Mind (Score:4, Informative)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:41PM (#2901562)
    I'm about half way through the book.
    Von Neuman plays a role in the book.
    Von Neuman invented the min-max algorithm which
    is widely used in artificial intelligence game
    playing programs such as chess. Nash's equilibrium
    point is supposed to be a powerful generalisation
    on min-max, but I don't see it often used in A.I. programs.
    Also in the book Von Neuman flips off Nash as being a pompous grad student.
    Nash gets the final laugh when he WINS the Nobel prize
    and Von Neuman doesn't.

    The founders of Artificial Intelligence John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky
    were classmates of Nash and have cameos in the book.

    Later in his career Nash becomes something of
    a computer hacker, but I haven't reached that part of
    the book yet.

    Both the book and movie are rare lterary depictions of grad school life.
    They capture the stresses of science/engineering nerds.
    Also things have changed since the 1950s and now,
    but not as much as you'd think.
  • I whole hearteddly agree. The prose reads like a narrative. I read the first quarter of it last night - and it kept me awake through the night. And though have not dug into the footnotes yet, I'm sure they will be as informative as the description of John's grandparent's wedding in the 1890s.
  • Excuse me? I thought that particular canard was debunked many years ago!

    http://www.adl.org/presrele/HolNa_52/2968_52.asp

  • electrocution? I don't think so. (Score:3, Flamebait)

    by fanatic ( 86657 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:45PM (#2901594)
    (one practical joke of Nash's involved filling a light fixture with
    water, which could have electrocuted a hapless victim when he turned on the light)

    Probably nonsense. If the 'victim' weren't actually touching the fixture in question, (i.e tuyrning on via a wall switch) there is no possibiliy of electrocution. If the victim were touching the fixter it would require all of the following to occur:
    1. The victim would have to touch a "hot" potion of the fixture, or be connected to a hot portion of the fixture via moisture that had acquired enough contaminants to be conductive (pure water doesn't conduct electricity very well), and
    2. The victim would also have to be touching 'ground' or neutral conducter, or connected to same via moisture that had acquired enough contaminants to be conductive

    The media have created this illusion that you can be electrocuted by being anywhere in the same county with water and electricity. This just isn't the case. The electricty must somehow flow through you, and it doesn't do this unless you are a path between 'hot' and neutral or ground. The classic example of the radio falling into the bathtub is probably harmless unless you touch the faucet or the drain, for example.
    • (one practical joke of Nash's involved filling a light fixture with water, which could have electrocuted a hapless victim when he turned on the light)
      I have to say that, so far, one of my main annoyances with this book are these tiny one-line anecdotes that honestly could have been innocent, albeit stupid, pranks. If someone were to write a biography about me, I hope they wouldn't dig up stupid little things I did (and probably am still doing) in my youth and use it as evidence that I was insane, intrinsically cruel, etc.

    • Plus, a 120V house-current is unlikely to electrocute most people. It's not fun, but not usually fatal.

  • Nasar's flawed image of genius (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gonerill ( 139660 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:50PM (#2901618) Homepage
    A weakness of the book that irritated me more and more as I read it was Nasar's determination to push the idea that Nash's genius was what made him such an awful person. His appalling behavior to colleagues, friends and loved-ones was inextricably tied up, according to Nasar, with his mathematical genius. Nash was an all-round asshole prior to his terrible illness. The first half of the book can be summarized as: Nash produces little work; Alienates, insults or abuses everyone he comes into contact with. Nasar continuously pushes the idea that Nash acted this way because Nash was a genius. His unworldly brilliance set him apart from (and above) his mediocre peers; he had no time for little minds; such behavior is what we must expect from great intellects, and so on. The film has even more of this attitude --- all the other faculty members are small-minded fame-grubbers jealous of Nash's brilliance.


    The problem is that the book itself is full of evidence that this picture of genius is simplistic in the extreme. While Nash was there, Princeton was full of first-rate intellects --- geniuses by any yardstick --- who shared nothing of Nash's sociopathic nature. Einstein was reserved and eccentric, but good-natured. Von Neumann was articulate and cosmopolitan, and heavily involved in politics. Godel (before his paranoia set in) was sophisticated and urbane. Each of these men easily outrank Nash. None of them shared his tendency to strut around proclaiming his own genius or his habit of sneering at the worthlessness of other minds. And yet both the film and the book push all the old myths of genius. When I was a grad student at Princeton the main consequence of this myth, as far as I could tell, was that everyone had to put up with jerks who thought they could induce genius in themselves by being an asshole to everyone else.

    • While Nash was there, Princeton was full of first-rate intellects --- geniuses by any yardstick --- who shared nothing of Nash's sociopathic nature...Von Neumann was articulate and cosmopolitan, and heavily involved in politics.

      I just have to add a plug here for Prisoners' Dilemma which is a combination von Neumann bio and mathematical exploration of his game-theoretic ideas. There are many other people mentioned in the book, from both Princeton and RAND, who further exemplify the non-correlation between being a genius and being an asshole.

      I think this "eccentric genius" meme is one of the ugliest to infect the computer community. People see the luminaries of the field acting in eccentric ways, and imitate the style while possessing none of the substance. If you don't know what I mean, look around. You're in the right forum to see that very phenomenon in action. I'll save my rant for somewhere else.

    • The question is -HOW?

      How do you get work done without being eccentric?

      Feynmann rightly noted that thinking about things requires long uninterruptable periods of time. He compared thinking to building a house of cards.

      Other "geniuses" have agreed. (They are also almost universal in saying that there is nothing particularly special about their brains or way of thinking. Einstein was quite adament about this.)

      The question in my mind is: How do you do it?

      I'm addicted to thinking, but I also value the happiness of the people around me. Feynmann was okay with declaring himself irresponsible in order to make time for his intellectual persuits, but what is the father of a needy daughter to do?

      Torvalds has two kids, but I get the impression that he neglects them, given the way that he holds his behavior in contempt ("I'm not a nice person; I'm a hard-boiled bastard who doesn't give a damn about anything but the technology", or something like that). If I recall right, Feynmann had his kids after he did his major works.

      Einstein is famous for rocking a cradle while working on a paper. That's relatively easy; I've written architecture on paper while rocking Sakura's when she was just 1 month old. I'm sure anyone could; 1 mth olds don't really DO much. Einstein has attributed much of his ability to work on problems to time available at the patent office.

      So, can you think a lot and Love your Neighbors at the same time? I'm not really all that sure. I think you just have to wait for steady blocks of time to show up, or start fucking people over with an angry temper.

    • A flawed reading (Score:4, Insightful)

      by melquiades ( 314628 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @05:13PM (#2903263) Homepage
      I think that's a very unfair reading of Nasar's writing.

      She makes it clear throughout the book that many of Nash's colleagues were also geniuses, and that there were all very different from him and from each other. Some were also assholes; some were extraordinarily generous. She gives them their credit both as being geniuses and as not all fitting the same "genius" mold.

      Nasar does make the argument that Nash's particular genius and his particular personality were tied together, which is almost certainly true. Certainly Nash was a driven, competitive, egotistical fellow -- and that had a great deal to do with what problems he chose to tackle (usually the ones that would grab the most attention if solved), and how he tackled them (angrily, obsessively, jealous of others working on the same problem).

      I didn't read that as anything other than a description of Nash. It is one model of one genius, and certainly Nasar does not present it as a model for all geniuses everywhere. I think your reaction may be based on a (very reasonable!) general irritation with the myth of the genius, and what you read into the book based on that irritation.

      As for the movie, I haven't seen it and can't comment on it.

    • I don't know if the author of the book got this confusion, but it doesn't help to promulgate it.

      Sociopathy (nowadays usually called Antisocial Personality Disorder, which I think is too euphemistic) and schizophrenia are completely different things. Schizophrenia is a thought disorder, diagnosed on Axis I. Sociopathy is a personality disorder, diagnosed on Axis II.

      Sociopathy doesn't seem to be related to genius at all, except that sociopaths tend to be pretty intelligent. Schizophrenia, or at least schizoaffective disorder, and manic depression (which often has schizoaffective features in manic and mixed states), on the other hand, do appear to be related to genius.

      I would go so far as to say that the cluster B personality disorders, of which sociopathy is one, aren't mental illnesses at all, but rather styles of dealing with others. It is certainly possible that someone could develop sociopathy as a result of being tormented for being schizophrenic, but it could happen for boatloads of other reasons as well.

  • So in other words he's almost as nuts as Larry Wall...

  • Very Semantical Correction (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Saeculorum ( 547931 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:56PM (#2901674)
    John Nash never received a Nobel Prize. The only "real" Nobel prizes are the ones in chemistry, peace, literature, physics, and medicine/physiology. Those were the ones established by Alfred Nobel in his will, and first awarded in 1901. The Nobel prize for Economics was established about 70 years later, in 1968. The Bank of Sweden created a foundation to award, "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". It was basically a marketting ploy to celebrate it's 300th anniversary. :) While the selection process is done similarly (the Economics award is done by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science, which also awards the prizes for chemistry and physics), the awards are quite distinct. Some physicians will complain bitterly if one mentions the Nobel Prize in Economics, since economics is not a "real" science.
    • Semantically, you're correct, but for more details, people should check out The Official Web Site of The Nobel Foundation [nobelprize.org]...

      Nobel himself (in his will, I think) simply stated that prizes be given to those who, during the preceding year, "shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind" and that one part be given to the person who "shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine."

      John Nash is mentioned here [nobel.se].

      Incidentally, it is correct to refer to Nash as a "Nobel Laureate" for winning his prize, the same as prize winners in Physics Chemistry, Medicine, etc.
      • IOW somebody doing works in economics do not qualify for a Nobel prize, because they never benefit mankind. Heck, they don't even benefit actual economics (or the capitalists if you want), because "economics" is not a real science and nothing they come up with actually works in the real world.

        Anyway, since the family of Nobel and the executor of the will don't think that the economics prize should be given in Nobels name - well, it probably shouldn't. Source: original article from the "Svenska Dagbladet" (in Swedish) [www.svd.se], translation [colorado.edu] from the "Post-Keynesian Thought List Archives"

  • Unnecessarily Harsh Review (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DaoudaW ( 533025 ) on Friday January 25, 2002 @01:58PM (#2901692)
    Disclaimer: I read the book a couple of years ago, so much of this is from memory.

    Irony: People who discover the book because of the movie tend to be more critical of the movie.

    I thoroughly enjoyed both the book and the movie. Sure I was aware of things that got left out, but as we all know from for example LOTR, when movies are made from books choices have to be made. I really appreciate the way them movie chose to emphasize the importance of relationships in Nash's li fe, as troublesome as they may have been at times.

    Nash's bisexuality: The book shows this ambiguously, not as a well-developed preference. It reflects Nash's narcissism more than anything else.

    Nash's divorce: Although they did separate for a short time after the divorce, they lived together for 25 years before getting remarried. When they were remarried last summer, Nash referred to the event as a retraction of the divorce, like a journal would retract a publication error.

    Terry Gross interviewed Sylvia Nasar on last night's Fresh Air [npr.org] (Real Audio) [npr.org]. She was strongly supportive of the choices made while writing the screenplay. She suggested that if more emphasis had been put on Nash's sexuality or political views, it would have detracted from the more important stuff, ie, Nash's lifelong relationship with Alicia and his descent into schizophrenia.
  • Timothy's text isn't Latin-1 compliant; most likely due to his use of a Microsoft editor to write his article. For Linux users like myself please turn off the smart quotes if you insist on using a Microsoft editor to write your articles.
  • Now wait a minute. Suddenly it's OKAY to not tell the whole story and make a movie from a book and not put everything in because one's a book and a movie can never include everything from a book (let alone this guys REAL story). Your egregious duplicity is undeniably annoying!

  • hollywood (Score:2, Funny)

    by kollaps ( 143984 )
    Seems to me like the best way to get a Golden Globe or Academy Award or one of those other 10,000 self-congradulating things is to play an eccentric genius or loveable mentally-handicapped person. After all, is there anyway easier to examine humanity than to observe someone who is extremely polarized one direction in the head? Yeesh. A Beautiful Mind was a well done movie and well acted movied but cliche in plot (even if it was based on a true story).

    My pick for favorite movie? Probably "Amelie." Though a bit long, its sweet without being too saccerine and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's style is just incredible.

  • Bisexual? So what? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rufusdufus ( 450462 )
    Many of the posters here have mentioned that Nash was a "bisexual, schizophrenic, deadbeat dad" not deserving the lovable storyline. This really hacks me off! Have you people learned nothing? Bisexuality is a natural fact, nothing to be ashamed of..and nothing to be scorned. Also, schizophrenia is a mental disorder, again something not to be stigmantized but something to be dealt with as a disease. Dead-beat dad? Well ok but that guy was bat-out-of-his-gourd for most of his life so maybe his priorities werent exactly in order. In his day, there was no viable treatment for schizophrenia, just a bunch of pseudoscience mumbo-jumbo that probably just made things worse.
    That fact is the man, flaws and all, made some major contributions to mathematics despite serious personal difficulty.

  • Nash's Work (Score:2, Informative)

    by herwin ( 169154 )
    The Nash Equilibrium is a very strange beast. It's a solution to the non-zero-sum game corresponding generally to a solution to the zero-sum game, but nastier. Interestingly, a number of the workers in Game Theory, in ESS Theory, and more generally in sociobiology have had similar mental illnesses. I suspect it has something to do with the nature of the problems game theorists like to work on.
  • As a person who graduated with almost a dual-degree in math and psychology, I was interested to read Naser's recounting of Nash's story. About a quarter of the way through, however, I am having trouble continuing.

    The book is a dedicated biography and reads a lot more like a text book than "the actual story of his life." (emphasis on "story"). It is not a very easy read, even for someone used to reading biographies (especially of mathematicians) and pscyhology textbooks.

    Be forewarned: It is an interesting book, but not an easy one to tackle.

    On a completely different note, one problem I had with the movie (of many, I did not think very highly of the movie) is the phrase "Based on a true story." I think that a much better phrase would have been "Inspired from a true story." I think that the English language, and Hollywood, have agreed on what these two phrases mean. Having seen the movie, and having known a bit of Nash's life, I think that "inspired" is a much closer description of what the movie is.

    It is a nitpick,but an important one, especially for people out there who are not going to research Nash's exact life.

  • An alternate view... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Withigo ( 99983 )
    After seeing the movie several weeks back(I thought it sucked), I found an old review of this book in the mathematics zine "Ferment." This review pretty much dismantles every shred of purported clueness in Sylvia Nasar's book.

    http://www.maths.ex.ac.uk/~mwatkins/zeta/nash.ht m# RH

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