A Beautiful Mind

•	A portrait of an intricate puzzle of the mind.
•	Inspired by the story of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Forbes Nash Jr. whose genius is intimately bound up with schizophrenia.
•	Adapted from a biography of the same name by Sylvia Nasar.
Schizophrenia
•	SKIT-suh-FREE-nee-ah
•	A severe psychological disorder characterized by loss of contact with reality, hallucination, delusions, inappropriate or flat affect, some disturbance in thinking, social withdrawal, and/or other bizarre behaviour.

Schizophrenia
•	Usually strikes people in their late teens or early twenties.
•	Recovery is not necessarily a normal thing.
•	Nash didn’t slide into the illness until he was thirty.
•	This gave him the time and opportunity to explore his theories and establish a social network that enabled him to later survive.
Schizophrenia
•	Much debate about what schizophrenia is and what causes it.
•	One view suggests that it is an illness with many manifestations.
•	Another view submits that it is a collection of illnesses often lumped together.
•	National Institute of Mental Health claims it is “a chronic, severe and disabling brain disease that has no known single cause.”
John Nash
•	A man apart, awkward and internal.
•	A West Virginia native without family money or prep school background arrives in Ivy League Princeton University in 1947.
•	Shy, fidgety and a total failure at social interaction.
•	He wrote a doctoral dissertation in 1950 which won him the Nobel Prize in 1994.
John Nash
•	At first we don’t notice that he is slipping into madness.
•	Only notice that he’s become obsessive in the competitive academic environment.

John Nash
•	His roommate provides him comfort, friendship and need distraction from his intense competition with his colleagues.
•	Nash’s drive to be the best makes any achievement fleeting and isolates him at the top of the pyramid.

John Nash
•	Finds challenge he has been searching for from William Parcher, a mysterious agent with the Department of Defense.
•	Parcher both recognizes his ability as the “best natural code breaker” and the value of his isolated lifestyle to top secret work.
John Nash
•	Physics student Alicia, who becomes his wife, challenges both his isolation and his life of the mind.
•	The conflict between his marriage and his secret work upsets the delicate balance between his genius and his schizophrenia. 

What to Watch For
•	What is the role of his roommate?
•	What is the role of agent from the Department of Defense?
•	What is the role of his wife Alicia?
•	What role does his friend/adversary play?
•	How does Nash overcome his problem?