A Beautiful Mind

I just finished reading A Beautiful Mind, the 1998 biography of mathematician John Nash by Sylvia Nasar. It’s an interesting account of a highly intelligent and creative man who suffered from schizophrenia. I’ll discuss information I gleaned from the book in this post. I’m assuming the biography is accurate, although I haven’t done any independent checking.

Like many people, I first heard of Nash by watching the movie starring Russell Crowe. The movie is true to the basic outline of the biography, but omits or fudges many relevant details. For example, the movie didn’t mention Nash’s travels to Europe or his divorce. From the movie, one would think that Nash’s disorder began at graduate school at Princeton, since that is when he first “sees” his imaginary roommate. This imaginary roommate isn’t mentioned in the book.

Although eccentric and strange, Nash didn’t suffer his first breakdown until age 30, which is relatively late for schizophrenia. If Nash had developed this disorder when he was 20, no one would have heard of him, and there would be no biography to read. It’s important to emphasize this point. For every famous person like Nash, there are thousands of talented people who, due to mental illness, never get a chance to exercise their talents.

What precipitated Nash’s initial breakdown? It could have been his marriage that occurred two years before, along with his wife’s pregnancy. Stress is known to precipitate psychiatric symptoms, and major life changes like getting married and having a child are significant sources of stress. It could have been a European honeymoon trip that Nash and his wife went on about 6 months prior to his breakdown. There’s no way to know for sure.

After his breakdown and initial hospitalization, Nash gave up his tenured position at MIT and headed to Europe, where he would spend the next 9 months, attempting to renounce his U.S. citizenship and become a “world citizen.” This behavior exemplifies that the severe mental illnesses are primarily disorders of instability. Who in his right mind would give up a tenured faculty position at MIT? Most normal people crave stability, and there’s nothing more stable than a tenured position. Mentally ill people crave the opposite; for them the stability of a tenured position is both frightening and undesirable. Nash’s travels are further indications of instability.

After Nash returned to the U.S., he had temporary episodes of sanity alternating with psychotic episodes. With some brief exceptions, he wasn’t able to resume his career until he had a remission in his fifties. This remission occurred after having lived a relatively quiet and stable life at Princeton for over ten years. Nash won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1994.

Nasar’s biography convinces me that schizophrenia is closer to bipolar disorder than Alzheimer’s Disease. Schizophrenia is an episodic disease, characterized by alternating sanity and insanity, of rational thought and delusions. At least in Nash’s case, it doesn’t appear to be degenerative.

There’s no evidence from the biography supporting my hypothesis that schizophrenia is connected to the Earth’s magnetic field. Before he developed schizophrenia, Nash traveled within the U.S., including working for a time at Rand in Santa Monica, California. If Nash were sensitive to the geomagnetic field, he should have developed a breakdown while living in California. The fact that his first breakdown occurred soon after a trip to Europe doesn’t imply that the different geomagnetic in Europe precipitated his schizophrenia.

Whether or not schizophrenia is connected to the geomagnetic field, there’s no question that it is a severely disabling disorder, probably the most disabling psychiatric disorder. That Nash was able to accomplish what he did despite the disorder, and the fact that he was able to achieve remission, is amazing.

How an Unstable Meritocracy Has Failed America

David Brooks’ interesting NY Times Op-Ed column points out that while American society has become more fair and open, the level of trust and respect of our institutions has plummeted. The male WASP, blue-blood establishment of the past has given way to a new establishment in which religion, family, race, and gender are no longer as important. People get into the top schools largely based on intelligence and academic achievement, and after they graduate they move into positions of power in government, business, and academia. This can be seen as a triumph of meritocracy, a system in which people are promoted and reach leadership positions based on ability. Isn’t that a good thing, something that generations of Americans have longed for, something that harks back to the anti-aristocratic heritage of the American Revolution?

Brooks points out that this meritocratic establishment is lacking in several respects. One is that it’s based on a narrow (academic) definition of talent. This definition lacks context and empathy, two important factors for good decision making. In recent years, members of the political and economic elite have made some poor decisions that have severely harmed American long-term interests.

Another problem with the current meritocracy (a point which was made by the authors of The Bell Curve) is that members of it live almost entirely separate lives from everyone else. They go to their elite schools, work in a rarefied environment, live in gated communities, and marry and socialize with other elites. They could care less about ordinary people.

Another problem is that solidarity among elites is weaker. The socially connected, inbred WASP elite may have competed with each other, but didn’t fight an all-out war, as elites do today. Is it in the best interests of the country that Democrats and Republicans can’t agree with each other on anything?

A related problem is that our society is too transparent. No one knew at the time that JFK was having various love affairs, because certain topics were considered off-limits to reporters. Was it in the best interest of the country that Bill Clinton was impeached for sexual indiscretions?

The most important problem with meritocracy is that it is unstable and based on short-term thinking. The WASP elite could trace their lineage back generations, and this family-centric perspective encouraged long-term thinking. The 1960’s revolution and its aftermath swept away the WASP elite, but didn’t put any stable social structures in its place. The U.S. has been a very unstable country since this revolution. This instability occurs at every level of society, from the family breakdown, drug abuse, and crime in the inner cities, to the reckless gambling of Wall Street elites that led to the current Great Recession. Schools and infrastructure have declined as our political leaders put special interests over the interests of the country as a whole.

Brooks doesn’t offer any solutions to this problem. While we can’t go back to the 1950’s, I think that we need to start rolling back some of the reforms that have led us to our present dire situation. We need to regain our appreciation for social stability and social structures, for family connections, and for long-term thinking. Creative public policy ideas that involve such an appreciation need to be formulated and implemented.