Nash Equilibrium As Portrayed In The 2001 Film, A Beautiful Mind

The story of John F. Nash, Jr.’s willpower and triumph over years of paranoid schizophrenia gained much popularity in the 2001 film, “A Beautiful Mind”. The film takes place in Cambridge, MA and Princeton, NJ depicting the mostly accurate story of John F. Nash’s battle with schizophrenia while managing to teach at MIT and Princeton University. As an influential American mathematician, he made major contributions to game theory which is now commonly known as “Nash Equilibrium”. Nash Equilibrium has be an influential theory in many fields of work to this day including economics, political science, and computer science.

The purpose of this paper is to examine any potential inaccuracies displayed in the 2001 film, “A Beautiful Mind” in comparison

Contrary to the film’s portrayal, John Nash and Alicia were married until 1963 when Alicia divorced Nash and then they remarried in 2001. Although they were no longer married during much of his difficult years battling the schizophrenia, Alicia still oversaw the majority of John’s care (Parker. 2015). A potential reason that the movie did not disclose the divorce is that the directors and producers of the film did not want to taint Alicia’s attractiveness as a character in the story. In society today, divorce is very much looked down upon and Alicia could have been viewed in a much more negative manner had the creators of the film disclosed the divorce during John Nash’s most difficult years. Additionally, since Alicia remained active in John Nash’s life in overseeing his care, the creators of the film may have thought that it was unnecessary to disclose the divorce since she was still a very active participant in his daily life. Had they disclosed the divorce, it would have only put a negative undertone to her character. Since the film was created when John and Alicia were still living, it is possible that the creators didn’t want to offend John and Alicia by making her seem like an unsupportive wife by leaving the marriage during his most difficult

Later in the movie, the viewer comes to find that Nash’s roommate was merely a figment of his imagination along with two other characters that ended up being delusions as well. It is actually not until 1959 that John Nash experiences his first bout of psychotic behavior when his second son is born. His psychotic behaviors were manifested in a way that he believed a source of power from outer space and even potentially foreign governments were communicating with him by way of The New York Times. (Nowak. 2015.) In addition, the film portrays Nash having been committed once to a mental health institution for an extended period of time to receive insulin shock therapy. In reality, Nash was in and out of hospitals receiving treatment for his psychosis and schizophrenic behaviors for approximately two decades following the initial symptoms of severe psychosis in 1959 all the while working short term positions at various universities (Capps. 2004). Following a fifty day period of treatment and observation, it was recommended by McLean Hospital’s doctors in Massachusetts that Nash remain for more observation and