44. Consider the problem of creativity and personality of the scientist in videotext "a Beautiful Mind."

One hallmark of creativity is the ability to discern complex patterns, for which Nash seems to have had a truly extraordinary talent. This facility enabled him to come up with theories of far-reaching consequence. However, his thirst foropportunities to apply his unique abilities often seems to have led him into misapplications of his gifts. Somewhat like finding that one has been typing on the wrong keys, we may know the format and yet discover that we have been working in the wrong register: believing we have been making sense and yet producing gibberish, cryptically encoded by the persistence of our error. The factor that seems to have made Nash so intensely vulnerable in this way seems to have been his narcissism, which required him to produce something grand enough to win recognition and admiration at a very high level but also made him disdainful of the types of experiences that might have provided greater reality testing. At university, for example, Nash did not attend classes. He was not interested in building a foundation, but rather was awaiting inspiration. However, when inspiration finally struck, it did not strike in a vacuum but was grounded in his observations of events in the social world.

Nash’s narcissism may be seen as the other side of his extraordinary talents and his intense interpersonal isolation. Extreme giftedness often goes hand in hand with an idiosyncratic way of viewing the universe that can impede the individual’s ability to find a ‘home’ in the interpersonal world (Gedo, 1996). Nash seems to have found it very difficult to engage with others and from an early age had learned first hand how cruel peers could be (Nasar, 1998). The resulting solitude and isolation probably exacerbated his desire for recognition and also served as an impetus for the ‘companions’ he devised as he became further and further divorced from reality.

Isolation is a two-edged sword: innovation requires the ability to tolerate isolation, but it is also important to be able to be recognized by one’s peers. Nash’s reactive hostility made it difficult for him to receive this recognition. At times, the idiosyncratic nature of an individual’s perceptions may interfere with the normalizing and containing functions of caretakers, thereby further attenuating the fine line between self and other and inhibiting the ability to take the perspective of the other. In this way, empathic attune ment is obstructed, not built, thereby reinforcing a paranoid-schizoid mode of relating characterized by difficulties in interpersonal relating that too easily become self-perpetuating.

In a theme that is to be repeated throughout the film, an early conversation with his ‘roommate,’ Charlie, shows Nash jokingly linking his brilliance in math to his avoidance of the interpersonal world: “People don’t like me,” he says, with apparent equanimity. At another level, however, the isolation itself is a dilemma for the creative individuals, who must negotiate between protecting his or her vision and time versus fulfilling interpersonal needs (Gedo, 1996). Even Nash ultimately comes to appreciate his deep need for others: “Away from contact with a few special sorts of individuals Iamlost, lost completely in the wilderness...so,it’s been a hard life in many ways” (Nasar, 1998, p. 169)