I finished reading 'Beautiful Mind', which was nothing like the movie, but still an excellent account of how to deal with the dieties of mental illness. John Nash went crazy when his ordinary thoughts gave way to the exhilaration of delusions. Delusions are not just childish fantasies ..but compulsions driven by terror and the will to survive. He believed he was receiving messages from superior beings in outer space when he read the New York Times –they told him that the US was becoming a fascist state and we were all being regimented. He became paranoid that independent thinkers like himself would be persecuted.
What I admire about Nash was his ability to counter these delusions and get out from under their influence. He accomplished this through the power of reason ..simply recognizing and rejecting the irrational beliefs that fueled his psychosis. If only my delusions were that easy to get rid of.
I put down the book and look out through the window of my Bavarian sanitarium. Tall pine trees waving in front of stormy gray skies ..not what I expected ..but definitely a break from the usual. Urges me to explore. Maybe that’s why I picked this book out of all the others in my brother’s collection. You learn a lot about things when they fall apart.
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