Abstract
This article focuses on John Nash, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994, and subject of the Award winning 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1958 at the age of 29. After presenting an account of the emergence, course, and eventual remission of his illness, the article argues for the relevance of his contribution to game theory, known as the Nash equilibrium, for which he received the Nobel Prize, to research studies of the schizophrenic brain and how it deviates from the normal brain. The case is made that the Nash equilibrium is descriptive of the normal brain, whereas the game theory formulated by John van Neumann, which Nash’s theory challenges, is descriptive of the schizophrenic brain. The fact that Nash and his colleagues in mathematics did not make the association between his contributions to mathematics and his mental breakdown and that his later recovery exemplified the validity of this contribution are noted and discussed. Religious themes in his delusional system, including his view of himself as a secret messianic figure and the biblical Esau, are interpreted in light of these competing game theories and the dysfunctions of the schizophrenic brain. His recognition that his return to normalcy came at the price of his sense of being in relation to the cosmos is also noted.
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Notes
A personal motivation for this article relates to the fact that Stewart Govig, who had been one of my undergraduate professors, wrote a book about his struggles to come to terms with the mental illness (diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenia) of his oldest son (Govig 1994). He noted how important it was for him to learn that his son suffered from what was “mostly a physical, biological brain disease” (p. 88). This did not make it any easier to cope with the realities of his son’s illness, but it relieved him of much of the guilt and stigma that was associated with the fact that his own son was mentally ill. I used Claridge’s discussion in support of this view in my chapter on John Govig in Fragile Connections (Capps 2005a). I am aware of the fact that the biological explanation for serious mental illness is itself disputed (Read 2004) but a discussion of the claims by those who dispute this explanation is beyond the scope of this article.
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Capps, D. John Nash, Game Theory, and the Schizophrenic Brain. J Relig Health 50, 145–162 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-009-9291-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-009-9291-5