Angels in America and HIV/AIDS, Essay Example

From a psychological perspective, hallucinations caused by health problems involve false and/or distorted perceptions of people or objects in the absence of stimulation. Although they seem real and vivid to the individual who experiences it, hallucinations cause afflicted individuals to see things that do not tangibly exist and undergo experiences that do not actually transpire. Such an altered state of mind can involve many different senses including touch, taste, hearing, vision, olfactory, and sometimes movement. The etiology of hallucinations differs depending on idiosyncratic circumstances, as the continuum includes those with schizophrenia as well as those who are rendered substance abusers (Myers, 2008, p. 198). Various studies and extant literature describe hallucinations and dreams as retaining similar causes, yet it is critical to differentiate between their phenomenologies because they share differences in addition to similarities. While the mind retains the capacity to function in the empirical world of perception and reaction, it can also concurrently suffer from the dissociative yet tenable experience of hallucination. Individuals located in the same environment both temporally and spatially may undergo distinctive experiences depending on whether or not they are fully hallucinating, sleeping, conscious, delirious, or drugged. Such disparate experiences are shaped by an individual’s idiosyncratic personal or medical histories in addition to how perceptive their mental cognition and cognitive acuity is. The reality an individual experiences therefore alters as he or she navigates these various states of being ( Kass et al., 1970, p. 488). Similar to the act of dreaming, hallucination has emerged as a formative and poignant trope in film and other forms of public entertainment, as the poignant yet tragic destruction of the human mind’s capacity to discern reality, which undermines the hegemonic paradigm of empirical reality via human senses. The sense enable an individual to describe an external reality yet does very little to disclose any information about the machinations of the human psyche and mind. Hallucinations in films such as Ron Howard’s seminal 2001 film A Beautiful Mind depict the various dimensions of perceived realities induced by mental illness. It portrays show delusions from the perspective of a genius who suffers from Schizophrenia in an innovative way that must be explored and assessed with regards to its accuracy. This film ultimately demonstrates the cultural and social currency of hallucinations in cinematic iconography within the context in which it was produced.

Although the paradigmatic picture of the empirical comprehension of the human senses renders sensory acts of display as wholly and completely real, there are cases in which delusive sensing become indistinguishable from the perception of the individual who experiences and enjoys them. Ron Howard’s A Beautiful Mind details the true story of the renowned noble Laureate winner John Nash Forbes, a brilliant mathematician who suffers from severe paranoid schizophrenia throughout his adult life without getting diagnosed. The film begins when Nash, played by academy ward winning actor Russell Crowe, begins his career in academia at Princeton University as a graduate student in mathematics. There he develops a reputation for his genius intelligence despite his social awkwardness. Awkward, socially-inept, and conspicuously arrogant, Nash spends most of his spare time devising a revolutionary equation in the field of mathematics. Part way through the film, however, the audience learns that many of the individuals Nash meets and converses with and the situations he finds himself in are all hallucinations that only existed within the crevasses of Nash’s beautiful and genius mind. Charles Herman, an English Literature student and roommate of Nash portrayed by Paul Bettany, is one of the first imaginary people Nash hallucinates. Nash also becomes ensconced in a world of mystery and imagination when he meets Parcher, a government official for the United States portrayed by Ed Harris. Parcher asks Nash to assist the Pentagon decipher codes in periodicals and magazines order to halt national security threats against the United States such as a nuclear bomb developed by the Soviets. The intriguing plot twist in this film is that neither Nash nor the audience is cognizant of the fact these situations and people are all contrived in his own mind until half way through the film, rendering it impossible for Nash in addition to members of the audience to be able distinguish fact from fiction due to his mental illness (Howard, 2001). Nash was later diagnosed as suffering from a severe mental health disorder called paranoid schizophrenia, a condition that is characterized as an individual having a “split mind” in which an alternative reality manifests in inappropriate emotions and actions, disorganized cognition, and disjointed and disturbed perceptions. Nash demonstrates a preoccupation with his hallucinations because they enhance his grandiosity, which is characteristic of individuals suffering from paranoid schizophrenia (Myers, 2008, p. 678).  Many different types of treatments and interventions are available for those suffering from this mental disorder, yet the treatments used in the film represent the most common. Nash first checked into a psychiatric hospital where he received high doses of anti-psychotic medications. Towards the middle of the film, he also undergoes insulin shock therapy, which has different degrees of success on his mental health condition. Ultimately, Howard’s A Beautiful Mind realistically investigates how mental illness can cause those afflicted by its diverse manifestations to perceive a fictive or distorted reality, thereby eschewing a paradigm of empirical reality so ubiquitous in scientific and philosophical discourses.

A hallucination is a false perception of an object, person, or situation, thereby rendering it difficult for those who experience hallucinations to distinguish reality from fiction. Hallucinations have various causes, including mental illness, which John Nash evinces, and they have real material consequences on the quality of life of an individual. Often, an individual who hallucinates is viewed by society as a person who possesses a disordered mind, thereby propelling an individual to subjectively experience how he or she projects the reality should be in the world. As such, this film raises greater awareness about the acute impact disordered mental health and how debilitating such illnesses can be. It makes the paranoia of a schizophrenic tenable for an audience that largely knows very little about the condition. Despite suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, Nash nonetheless thrives as a mathematician, thereby eschewing salient notions that disordered minds are less intelligent.

References

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Howard, R. (2001). A beautiful mind. Perf. Russell Crowe. Imagine Entertainment.

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