ssor at MIT, he told the chairman of a rival department that he wouldnÆt be able to accept an offer because æI am scheduled to become the emperor of AntarcticaÆö (52). As work becomes more pressurized for Nash, he begins to suffer from paranoia. He thinks the Russians are sending secret codes in the pages of the New York Times and becomes obsessed with decoding them. His delusions grow more intense in the film as his assignments grow more complex and dangerous. He is suspicious of everyone around him, particularly William Parcher, the shadowy government figure in the black car and black hat. Nash believes he is being persecuted because of his misperceptions commonly associated with paranoid schizophrenia. As Kris Mohandie and James E. Duffy (1999) write, ôA delusion is an erroneous or false belief that usually involves a misinterpretation of perceptions or experiences. The delusion may be somatic, persecutory, or grandiose. Most frequently, however, the themes are persecutoryö (8).
The film does its best job in portraying the social/occupational dysfunction that is brought about by paranoid schizophrenia. Nash does not believe he is sick. According to the DSM-IV (1994)
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