The movie “A Beautiful Mind” captures the story of a man suffering from schizophrenia and documents the stages of the disorder throughout his life. The protagonist, John Nash, is a gifted graduate student in mathematics at Princeton University. The movie follows John involving himself in normal social situations. For example: meeting his roommate, making friends, trying to pick up women at bars. He uses a rejection at a bar as formulation for his thesis paper, which leads him to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He teaches a calculus class at MIT, where he meets a student by the name of Alicia Larde. She shows a special interest in him during his office hours and they end up falling in love and getting married. It is here, where John encounters …show more content…
The typical symptoms of schizophrenia consist of positive and negative symptoms. The positive symptoms are hallucinations, delusions, confused thoughts/speech, and strange movements. The negative symptoms include emotionless attitude, withdrawal from society, and struggling with basic forms of life. In some cases, cognitive symptoms occur where a person cannot keep track of what they are doing or saying. John’s college roommate in graduate school was a delusion, he lived alone and he did not realize this was a delusion until in treatment by Dr. Rosen. The Department of Defense agent William Parcher who guided John in writing letters about the conspiracy for the government was not real as well. He was talking with Mr. Parcher, dropping letters off at what he believed was a mailbox linked to the government, and he constantly felt like he was being followed by the FBI. He also had a delusion of his college roommate Charles’ niece. These three characters were the key delusions he exhibited throughout the movie. Mr. Parcher was the delusion that made him anxious, nervous, scared, and paranoid because