Hero of the Day: John Nash
You’d think John Nash would have been featured as Hero of the Day before, but A Beautiful Mind came out a while ago, and this is the first I’ve heard him since speaking on the subject of schizophrenia. His remarks to a recent APA meeting were published in Psychiatric News:
“When there are large populations and behavior of a complex structure, it observably turns out that the individuals of a species can have quite varied forms of behavior and that they may serve the interests of a nest or family or tribe in quite varied fashions,” Nash told psychiatrists. “In some varieties of ants there are specialized members of a nest that are ‘warrior ants,’ and these are quite specialized in their function. And with the bees, only the queen and the haploid drones function directly in the genetics of reproduction, and most of the hive are ‘worker bees.’
“It is conceivable that the susceptibility of humans to depression or to bipolar disorder may correlate positively specifically with the composition of poetry,” Nash said. He noted that the American poet Robert Lowell was hospitalized at McLean Hospital near Boston at the same time that Nash was admitted for schizophrenia.
“One thing about diversity in natural species that is well understood by evolutionary biologists is that the natural phenomenon of mutations serves to prepare a species for adaptation to changing conditions or for improved adaptation to an existing level of environmental circumstances,” Nash said. “This is a topic that has been studied in game theory…. If species are considered as players in a game that continually repeats, and if the species are provided with the possibility of change through mutation of their playing behavior,… then the effect is that the players or species can be shown to naturally evolve so as to get better payoffs from the game.
“So a possible, but perhaps questionable, inference is that humans are notably subject to mental illness because there was a need for diversity in the patterns of human mental functions,” Nash said.
Bottom line: You’re crazy for a reason!
Nash Suggests Schizophrenia May Serve Adaptive Function
liz | 3:31 PM | Uncategorized
Now you tell me..!
A comment on mental illness and a comment on evolved adaptations:
Schizophrenia is not associated with genius or creativity. None of our evidence says it’s anything but severely impairing. John Nash is a genius, but that’s not neccesarily due to schizophrenia. People who are geniuses can also be crazy without a causal link.
On the evolutionary side: the detrimental effects of adaptations aren’t always stated clearly. An “successful” adaptation can severely impair most of the people who have it if, on average, there’s enough benefit for at least some people to “balance that out”. It doesn’t have to benefit an individual person. It doesn’t even have to benefit any of the people who actually have it! It might benefit copies of their genes that reside in their kin, instead. This is where schizophrenia may come into play – family members of people with schizophrenia display increased creativity.
If serious mental illnesses are adaptations (I’m not convinced they are, despite adoring evolutionary psychology, but I’m open to the possibility), they’re not beneficial for most affected people. If they were, we wouldn’t call them mental illnesses – a major requirement in the DSM is that a mental disorder cause marked impairment in functioning. At the end of the day, talking about how severe mental illness can cause creativity and genius covers up the crappy reality of just trying to make it day to day, let alone hold down a job or have good relationships.
I’m no evolutionary psychologist but might it not be that such adaptations, though not necessarily benefficial for the individual, are good for the species as a whole? Something like the one deer or monkey in a herd whose job it is to be on the watch for predators and who sometimes even draws attention to itself in order to let the rest of the herd, specially the younger animals, escape. There are so many other examples of seemingly altruistic behavior in the animal kingdom. Not good for the individual but good for the species. But, like I said earlier, I’m no evolutionary psychologist!
Hello,
I apologize in advance for a very long posting.
I had treatments like John Nash, 40 insulin comas and ECT. That is where most of the similarity ends. There are very few of us that had that terrible treatment and moved passed it and on with our lives. All of us are unique – our journeys of transformation/recovery are not predictable by diagnosis. To get unstuck and continue our personal development and life journeys, certain principles stand out. It is essential to believe that transformation is possible. Most importantly, we must never give up and relinquish our dreams. That is why I am firmly committed to telling not only of the abuses but the success stories.
From my book:
“Defying the gloom-and-doom predictions of experts, the psychiatric survivor and the resilient child teach us valuable lessons. With evidence showing that children born into terrible circumstances are able to thrive, and research showing recovery from schizophrenia, we need to direct our efforts at constructing pathways to resiliency. The research indicates that the lessons learned from these nearly invincible kids can teach us how to help all kids to handle the inevitable risks and turning points of life. Instead of exclusively studying children who fail, we can focus on learning from the children who survive and thrive. The same might be said for studying the stories of psychiatric survivors.
At the 2006 National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy annual conference I met a new friend, Dorothy Dundas. In the forty years since I had those decimating insulin treatments, I have discovered only three others who have overcome similar assaults on their brain and spirit. Leonard Roy Frank, Don Weitz, Dorothy Dundas and I were among the last victims of that nonsensical, horrific treatment. Central to each of our lives has been the desire to insure the rights and improve the prospects for all of our peers.
Don Weitz is co-editor of the book Shrink Resistant: The Struggle Against Psychiatry in Canada. Having just celebrated his seventieth birthday a few days earlier, Don told me during a 2001 protest march in Toronto, “I live for these protest rallies.” He is the consummate activist, fully committed to opposing all forms of social injustice.
And of course, my friend Leonard Roy Frank, author, researcher, historian, activist and unyielding warrior in the fight to expose the extensive harm and suffering caused by electroshock and the need to abandon its use as a psychiatric treatment. After a series of electroshock and insulin coma treatments that caused him to lose his memory, Leonard developed a paired association technique to re-educate himself. His lists of paired words were precursors to the quotations he collected and which he later expanded and published as the Random House Webster’s Quotationary.
Later, as I corresponded with Dorothy and marveled at the instant rapport and affection we felt for each other, knowing I felt similarly about Don and Leonard she wrote back to me:
‘I think passing through the fire is definitely part of it. I shall never be the same; I know. I am a more caring and aware person because of it. A lot of it has to do with the atrocities I witnessed as well as went through myself. I think being witness to terrible injustices, without being able to stop them, can be more painful than actually living through them yourself. As I think I said to you before, I have always been left with the desire to shout about all of this with a giant megaphone from the top of the Empire State Building. The fantasy is that the sound of my voice would flow around the world into the ears of those who could make a difference.’
I am grateful for these friendships. I mourn the missing casualties. I hope that this book serves as that giant megaphone.
To be frank, although self-promotion runs counter to what I try to be and do,I know how important it is right now to market myself and my book.
The book is called “A Fight to Be: A Psychologist’s Experience from Both Sides of the Locked Door.”
I hope the book finds its way to people and places where it can be helpful – that was the motivation to keep me going through the 25 years of writing it.
Ron Bassman
THIS WAS A COMMENTARY I WROTE DECEMBER 30, 2001, IMMEDIATELY AFTER SEEING “A BEAUTIFUL MIND.”
It’s 2:15 in the morning, I was drowsy when I went into the movie theater 4 hours ago — and now I’m wide awake and wouldn’t be able to go to sleep anytime soon even if I wanted to (which I don’t).
I’ve just seen “A Beautiful Mind.”
I can’t say it’s the best movie I’ve ever seen. It rushes a bit at the end. And the narrative is incredibly straightforward — perhaps a bit too simple to be an all-time great (especially at the end — like a diver with the bends, the descent is perfect but the ascent is perhaps a bit too quick). But otherwise, it’s darn close.
Russell Crowe is unbelievable. If he doesn’t win another Oscar it will be highway robbery. (EDITOR’S NOTE: I love Denzel, but I absolutely still believe this.) Jennifer Connelly should be at least nominated. (EDITOR’S NOTE: Of course, she won.) And most importantly, the story is the first Hollywood movie I have seen that illustrates the full tragedy and devastation of mental illness with SUBTLETY. (Something completely lacking in, Rain Man, Shine or Girl Interrupted, to name some recent Oscar-winning examples.) Needless to say, you have to see this movie.
The very subtlety made it REAL — and that’s what left me near tears as I left the theater.
Because I’ve been there. Not, as Crowe’s character was, schizophrenic (that much, of course, is well known from the true story of John Nash, but I can’t tell you his manifestations without giving away the movie), but certainly locked up and out of touch with reality — and then helpless for long beyond gaining some touch with reality because of being unsure just what a grip you have. The anger, resentment, and bewilderment at being trapped in your own mind — which you have depended upon for your brilliance, and therefore your identity, your entire life. And then the complete inability to communicate all this to those you love.
Even now, of course, I couldn’t say any of this to the parents who went to the movie with me — they wouldn’t have a clue (EDITOR’S NOTE: They still don’t). Or if they did, it would scare them sh*tless to realize I really WAS that sick rather than just “overtired.”
One reason the movie was so emotionally affecting was because John Nash, Crowe’s real life character, clearly would not have made it without the incredible patience of his wife Alicia (played by Connolly), who stuck by him not entirely — as the film portrays it — but certainly most of the way in real life, and kept a close eye on him from afar even when it was too much to be with him.
The movie never comes out and says this (to its slight discredit), but apparently the book upon which it is based makes the case for recent research that says that plain old aging helps ameliorate schizophrenia and bipolarity — i.e., the very senility that makes us forgetful (and in severe cases obviously becomes Alzheimer’s) can help slow down the misfiring synapses. I can tell you that this has certainly happened to my bipolar grandmother, who has all kinds of other, physical health problems but no longer takes medication for mental illness (and no longer seems to need to). (EDITOR’S NOTE: She died on Thanksgiving last year.)
Anyway, all this brought back a huge amount of resentment about having the misfortune in my illness of being married to, not Alicia Nash, the world’s most patient woman, but instead perhaps the world’s LEAST patient woman — my ex-wife.
It’s not that I didn’t lay some serious sh*t on her, and it’s not that the situation wouldn’t have freaked out most people — or, for that matter, that perhaps it clarified that we weren’t meant to be. But the movie did call to mind something I said bitterly to her so many times during my illness, and she never came up with a good answer for it (and still, really, hasn’t): “We said to each other in sickness and in health — but I guess you only meant in health.” I know Emily felt abandoned by me as a result of my illness; but to this day I don’t think she understands how completely abandoned I felt (and still feel) by her.
She has said in retrospect it took me almost taking my life and being hospitalized (just after our separation) to realize how bad off I was, and that that was helped her to forgive me for hurting her. (?!?!) But even then, she never visited me in the hospital — because it was too “difficult” for her. As if things weren’t a little “difficult” for me, too …
Incidentally, one thing I didn’t like about the movie was the implication of a fine line between genius and insanity. One thing I can say without giving away your enjoyment of the movie is that while the way John Nash tried to deal with his schizophrenia derived from his genius, I think you have to conclude he would have been schizophrenic whether his IQ was 175 or 17.5. Although I’m obviously biased, I’ve grown to disagree a bit with the Kay Jamison point of view on this that genius/creativity is linked with bipolarity/schizophrenia/other mental illness. I think it’s more what happened with Nash — when someone is intelligent, they may be able to channel their manifestations more creatively and cover them up better.
But the illness comes out in the end, no matter what you score on the SAT’s — and sadly, the lack of treatment in the interim just makes things worse. And I think this was true of me as well.
One thing that seems to be implied in Nash’s statement is that an adaptation that’s detrimental in the present environment could actually be helpful if the environment changes. That seems to makes a lot of sense. If everyone is perfectly adapted to the way things are, and things change, then noone will be very well adapted. But if a lot of people are maladapted in different ways, then when things change some of the maladapted may be just right for the new reality. I believe that’s kind of how evolution works.
Another thing I noticed in the article is that it says something about Nash having stopped taking medications prior to the 1990s, and showing signs of recovery after that. I believe the movie they made about his life portrayed him as having never stopped taking medications. It seems strange that they would make a movie about someone and have such a blatant misrepresentation about an important part of his life. It’s as if they made a movie about Ulysses S. Grant and had him being a complete tee-totaler, and saying that he owed most of his successes in life to his total avoidance of alcohol. That wouldn’t be a biography about the U.S. Grant that actually lived in this universe, and likewise the “Beautiful Mind” movie was not entirely about the John Nash that lives in this universe. Maybe it portrayed a John Nash that lives in some kind of parallel universe somewhere.
Imagine if people labeled as schizophrenic were treated with decency, respect and compassion – perhaps more would recover, as they do in “undeveloped countries” where they are not shunned. The unimaginable cruelty that is locking up someone who is paranoid in a filthy hospital with a hostile underpaid staff and torturing them with meds that don’t make them stop hearing voices, but instead force them to stop bothering others by talking about hearing voices doesn’t heal anyone. It saves closed minded folk their pathological embarrassement. The way families treat adult schizophrenics is generally proof that the predelection for occaisional incidents of psychosis that our society calls schizophrenia is exacerbated by trauma and people are debilitated by their families’ embarrassment and the cruelty of society at large.
A Beautiful Mind was a NAMI commercial with very little truth about Nash’s life. Read the book! Futhermore, those who want to bitch about genius and the condition labeled as schizophrenia being connected, love to cloak themselves in the idea that people murder because they are labeled as bipolar.
The movie is a far cry from Nash’s life as depicted in Sylvia Nasar’s biography. If I remember correctly, the movie made no mention of the relationship between Nash and the mother of his first son and puts forth the falsehood that Nash’s recovery was predicated on his taking medication.
The book includes the following passage on John Sr.’s view of John Nash, Jr. (”Johnny” who suffers from schizophrenia and has a Phd. in mathematics.) “He’s sometimes quite cruel, telling Harold Kuhn and others at times that people like Johnny ought to be jailed or that he has chosen to be as he is: “I don’t think of my son…as entirely a sufferer he is simply choosing to escape from ‘the world.’”
Reply: