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In the first edition of this column I discussed perhaps my favorite "psych" movie Awakenings. This edition I will discuss what seems to be everyone else's favorite "psych" movie-A Beautiful Mind. I should add that this movie was also the favorite of the Academy Awards selection committee, i.e., Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, etc. Quite frankly, I did not like this movie the first time I watched it in a theater. Some of those complaints continue to linger: (a) Mr. Howard tricked the viewer with his initial depictions of hallucinations. I was well into the movie before I figured out that the roommate, the little girl, and the government agent were hallucinatory/delusional characters. Of course, I think the director's approach made for a great movie but detracted from what I was anticipating. (b) I questioned the authenticity of some of the scenes in the film but to be fair I have never worked with a person with the intellectual stature of this patient so I may not be a good judge of that, either. Certainly, watching A Beautiful Mind again softened some of my earlier complaints.
The movie is set in 1947 on the campus of Princeton University and moves forward. We see John Nash (played by Russell Crowe), a brilliant young mathematician, arrive on campus as the beneficiary of the Carnegie Prize for mathematics. This esteemed award is bestowed on only the most beautiful of minds. Even in these early scenes at a genius-mixer we are given clues to Nash's withdrawn, asocial tendencies. He states, "I don't like people much and they don't like me." A little later in the movie he meets a girl in a bar and says, "Can we just go straight to the sex?" This comment results in a slapped face. Later he refers to himself as a "lone wolf." It is at Princeton that the first of the hallucinatory characters emerge-Charles, his...