PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION: Chapter 11

Interview with
Dr John Nash
On hearing voices……………

Initially I did not hear any voices. Some years went by before I heard voices
and -- I became first disturbed in 1959, and I didn't hear voices until the
summer of 1964 I think, but then after that, I heard voices, and then I began
arguing with the concept of the voices.

And ultimately I began rejecting them and deciding not to listen, and, of
course, my son has been hearing voices, and if he can progress to the state
of rejecting them, he can maybe come o ut of his mental illness.

The consequence of rejecting the voices is ultimately not hearing the voices.
You're really talking to yourself is what the voices are, but it's also parallel to a
dream. In a dream it's typical not to be rational.

I had some philosophical ideas that were involved. I found myself thinking in
political terms, but then I found myself able to criticize this thinking -- that it
wasn't very valuable to think in political terms. Even now, I sometimes have a
new realization that it can be not so good to think in political terms about
some of the current issues. One can leave that to others.

So in rejecting some of the political ideas, that had a relation to the voices, so
I could think of a voice maybe as presenting what was analogous to a political
argument, and then I could say, I don't want to listen to that.

On delusional thinking………….

In madness, I thought I had a very important role, and, of course, that includes
the messenger-type function. That is a Muslim concept particularly with
Muhammad. He's the messenger of Allah. That's, I think, a standard phrase.
So I saw myself as being a messenger or having a special function. I saw it in
terms of there being supporters, but also of opponents, and so I would think
that if I was put in the hospital, it wo uld be a coup d'etat by the opponents.

I had this feeling of persecution. I had the idea that some of the people -- I
think Eisenhower was still president then -- and the Pope and the powers that
be might be unsympathetic to me. I envisioned a hidden world where the
Communists and non-Communists were into this thing -- they were sort of
schemers.

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 PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION: Chapter 11

At a very early time I got the idea that I would receive a message somehow.
Later on I felt that I might get a divine revelation by seeing a certain number
that wo uld appear. A great coincidence could be interpreted as a message
from heaven.

On medication…………..

On a short-term basis I would be taking the drugs and I would reach a level of
acceptance. But not just because of the drugs. And I would then come out of
the hospital and I would have a job and I would do some work. And at that
time they didn't have the same drugs that they have now.

The drugs I think can be overrated. All of the drugs now continue to have
some bad side effects.

There would be times in between when I would stop taking drugs and I would
not immediately go under any regimen. So I don't know. I am lucky to have
come out of mental illness at all, but certainly in the later years I had no drugs.

I didn't have the worst side effects, some of the long-term side effects.
Nowadays they have drugs that are considered better. But one of the angles
is it's considered more or less acceptable if a drug can be used for
schizophrenia. But the people get very sleepy and they gain a lot of weight.
But this is considered acceptable. But it's not so good if you gain a lot of
weight over a long time period. Then there are many health effects. So you
can say that this person's life is really going to be shortened because of all the
cardiac, cardiovascular consequences of being overweight.

Activities:
1. Despite John Nash's brilliance and the benefits the United States stood to
receive from his work, the government subsidised neither his education nor
his later hospitalisation. Do you think the government should identify "potential
geniuses" at an early age and pay their educational and other expenses as
they mature? As a class, create a list of reasons for and against this proposal,
then vote on it.

2. Read the biography of John Nash or his autobiography and use the
information in them and the film to create a timeline of the major events of
John Nash's life. Use different colours for the timeline itself to symbolise the
state of Nash's mental health (to the degree that it can be determined) during
different periods of his life. For example, use yellow for periods when he was
relatively healthy, blue for periods when he was mentally ill, and green for
periods of transition.

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