The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 63, No. 1, March 2003 ( 2003)

A BEAUTIFUL MIND

Marilyn Charles

It is often difficult to discern the line between creativity and madness. This presents a particularhazard for the analyst, whose failure to recognize real potential can result in undermining theindividual’s developmental strivings. This dilemma is explored through a case illustration of awoman whose creativity was undermined by a lack of recognition. To vivify the dilemma, theauthor invites the reader to look through her eyes into the lens offered by the film A BeautifulMind, which portrays the struggles of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash to main-tain his sanity while also testing the limits of his mind and imagination. These illustrationsencourage us to consider the dilemma of the gifted individual when excessive tension arisesbetween absorption in one’s medium versus needs for recognition.

KEY WORDS: creativity; cinema; recognition; identification.

We have all encountered products of mind that have left us in awe. Asanalysts, we are in a position to encounter the incredible beauty of themind itself as we follow our patients’ associations from conception to con-ception, across disparate points to an unanticipated end. At times we alsofind ourselves in the uncomfortable position of being unable to discriminatethe fine line between truth and fiction, reality and distortion; a dilemmathat can be particularly problematic when dealing with highly creative indi-viduals. This dilemma is exemplified quite vividly in Ron Howard’s film ABeautiful Mind, which portrays the struggle of Nobel Prize-winning mathe-matician John Nash to maintain his sanity while also testing the limits ofhis mind and imagination.One hallmark of creativity is the ability to discern complex patterns, for

which Nash seems to have had a truly extraordinary talent. This facilityenabled him to come up with theories of far-reaching consequence. How-ever, his thirst for opportunities to apply his unique abilities often seems tohave led him into misapplications of his gifts. Somewhat like finding thatone has been typing on the wrong keys, we may know the format and yetdiscover that we have been working in the wrong register: believing we

Marilyn Charles, Training and Supervising Analyst, Michigan Psychoanalytic Council; AdjunctProfessor, Michigan State University Department of Psychology.Address correspondence to Marilyn Charles, Ph.D., 325 Wildwood Drive, East Lansing, MI

48823-3154; e-mail: mcharles@msu.edu.21

0002-9548/03/0300-0021/1 2003 Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

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have been making sense and yet producing gibberish, cryptically encodedby 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 producesomething grand enough to win recognition and admiration at a very highlevel but also made him disdainful of the types of experiences that mighthave provided greater reality testing. At university, for example, Nash didnot attend classes. He was not interested in building a foundation, butrather was awaiting inspiration. However, when inspiration finally struck,it did not strike in a vacuum but was grounded in his observations of eventsin 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 goeshand in hand with an idiosyncratic way of viewing the universe that canimpede the individual’s ability to find a ‘home’ in the interpersonal world(Gedo, 1996). Nash seems to have found it very difficult to engage withothers and from an early age had learned first hand how cruel peers couldbe (Nasar, 1998). The resulting solitude and isolation probably exacerbatedhis desire for recognition and also served as an impetus for the ‘compan-ions’ 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 inter-fere with the normalizing and containing functions of caretakers, therebyfurther attenuating the fine line between self and other and inhibiting theability to take the perspective of the other. In this way, empathic attune-ment is obstructed, not built, thereby reinforcing a paranoid-schizoid modeof relating characterized by difficulties in interpersonal relating that too eas-ily become self-perpetuating.Whereas Nash’s overt response to this isolation seems to have been one

of grandiosity and reactive hostility, other individuals (as was the case with‘Marta,’ to follow) may lament their inability to thrive in the interpersonalworld. These two disparate paths may be usefully viewed as a function ofwhat Rosenfeld (1971) calls destructive versus libidinal envy. This terminol-ogy marks the important distinction between recognition of the other’s giftsin a positive sense versus the type of destructive envy that tends to denyand annihilate the other (Etchegoyen, Lopez, and Rabih, 1987). Each ofthese paths represents an attempt to grapple with the fact of otherness andwith the question as to how one might equilibrate one’s self in a world inwhich one is different in important ways.For Marta, for example, difference had become the essential factor that

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marked her as abhorrent and devalued. This had made it difficult for her toutilize her creative talents in productive ways. The price of acceptanceseemed to be the repudiation of her inner world. As the illusion of connect-edness replaced her ability to ground herself in her art, her creativity be-came largely inaccessible to her. Marta’s attempts to seek assistance hadmerely exacerbated this dilemma, as her encounters with professionals whowere not able to envision her creative potential—but rather treated her asthough she need only give up her ‘delusions’ and reconcile herself to a‘normal’ life—further attenuated her ability to believe in herself.

ABSORPTION AND IDENTIFICATION

As we encounter John Nash within the images projected on the cinemascreen, we are confronted quite graphically with the dilemma of the linebetween reality and fiction. It is the artistry of the filmmakers that enablesus to vicariously experience Nash’s world, through their creation of a newlycomposed reality that configures itself in form to their fantasy of the actual-ity of Nash’s experience. However, it is our willingness to believe in thereality so constructed that amplifies the illusion of truth in this type of film,which structures itself around a real life without necessarily following thefacts of it.As a tool for the elucidation of psychic realities, the cinema can be both

dream and nightmare. It provides an opportunity to project complex reali-ties upon the screen, through which they might be considered, reflectedon, and better understood. However, it also provides a means for promotingdistortions and misperceptions on a wide scale. At the very core of our loveaffair with the cinema is our ability to identify and disidentify with thecharacters on the screen. In psychoanalytic terms, identification is definedas a process of assimilation, whereby attributes of the other are transformedand adapted into aspects of self, such that “it is by means of a series ofidentifications that the personality is constituted and specified” (Laplancheand Pontalis, 1973, p. 203). Within the film, identification is structured as“a movement, a subject-process, a relation: the identification (of oneself)with something other (than oneself)” (de Lauretis, 1984, p. 141), such thatabsorption into the film provides a means for self-development through theintertwining processes of identification and disidentification.Within the reality defined by the cinematic space, the film invites us in:

it ‘absorbs’ us into itself. Absorption is a term used by Diderot (1751) todescribe a process in which “one gives oneself up to it with all one’sthought without allowing oneself the least distraction” (Fried, 1980, p. 184),so that one is enveloped, swept away, and even disappears through incor-poration into something else. This is a very apt description of the identifica-

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tory process within the world of film, in which the viewer is invited in as aspectator/participant within the drama unfolding. Through this process, thebeholder is both inside and outside the film through identifications with thecamera/director and with the characters being represented. The successfulfilm absorbs us: it holds us in its thrall: we are captured by whatever isbeing depicted. However, the process of absorption entails our disappear-ance. As we ‘suspend disbelief’ and are carried into the drama, we disap-pear, to some extent, as a critical eye. As this happens, we are more suscep-tible to also absorbing whatever ‘realities’ are being depicted within thefilm (Charles, forthcoming, a).This process of absorption is an apt metaphor for the dilemma in which

John Nash (as portrayed in the film) finds himself; the very factors that lendfire to his creativity also endanger his very being. It is also an apt metaphorfor Nash’s creative genius, which is of the intuitive variety. “Nash saw thevision first, constructing the laborious proofs long afterward. But even afterhe’d try to explain some astonishing result, the actual route he had takenremained a mystery to others who tried to follow his reasoning” (Nasar,1998, p. 12). in order to make use of his genius, he needed to believe inhis own visions, which enabled him to make his great contributions butalso entrapped him. When asked by Harvard Professor George Mackeyhow a man of science could have believed in such fantasies as extraterres-trial messengers, Nash replied quite simply: “Because . . . the ideas I hadabout supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematicalideas did. So I took them seriously” (Nasar, 1998, p. 11).

GENIUS AND MADNESS: NARCISSISM OR INTERPERSONAL ISOLATION

From the beginning of the film, Nash’s psychological difficulties arelinked to his narcissism and to his interpersonal isolation. Within the por-trayal of Nash in the film, one may see classic elements of what Kernberg(1974) has described as a narcissistic personality structure, including in-tense ambitiousness, grandiose fantasies, feelings of inferiority, and an over-reliance on external acclaim and admiration. Because of the primitivenessof the defenses—such as splitting and defensive denial—grandiose fanta-sies may coexist with feelings of inferiority without apparently conflictingwith one another. Kernberg’s characterization reads somewhat like a de-scription of Nash, himself: “Along with feelings of boredom and emptiness,and continuous search for brilliance, wealth, power and beauty, there areserious deficiencies in their capacity to love and be concerned about oth-ers” (p. 215). This characterization, however, tends to pathologize an essen-tial dilemma of the gifted individual: the tension between the need for suffi-cient isolation within which to manifest one’s visions and the need for

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sufficient external support and recognition to sustain one’s self and efforts(Gedo, 1996).For some creative individuals, the lack of attachment in the interpersonal

domain leads them further into creative activities as a defense against acuteisolation (Storr, 1972). For example, Nash’s fantasies may have initially pro-vided him with some relief of the tension between his intense isolation andyearnings for recognition. However, peopling the universe with figments ofone’s imagination merely compounds the dilemma, as yearnings for com-panionship become diverted into autistic pursuits rather than being directedtoward building actual relationships. In addition, there is a protective partof the self that shields the fantasies (and thereby the madness) from view,further attenuating the lines between self and other, and with them, be-tween fantasy and reality.In a theme that is to be repeated throughout the film, an early conversa-

tion with his ‘roommate,’ Charlie, shows Nash jokingly linking his bril-liance in math to his avoidance of the interpersonal world: “People don’tlike me,” he says, with apparent equanimity. At another level, however, theisolation itself is a dilemma for the creative individuals, who must negotiatebetween protecting his or her vision and time versus fulfilling interpersonalneeds (Gedo, 1996). Even Nash ultimately comes to appreciate his deepneed for others: “Away from contact with a few special sorts of individualsI am lost, lost completely in the wilderness . . . so, it’s been a hard life inmany ways” (Nasar, 1998, p. 169).Nash links his eventual remission not only to the people who enabled

him to work his way back to reality but also to his own determination. Inthis endeavour, his creativity served him well, providing him with a meansfor navigating within a difficult world. As Nasar puts it: “His overridinginterest was in patterns, not people, and his greatest need was making senseof the chaos within and without by employing, to the largest possible ex-tent, the resources of his own powerful, fearless, fertile mind” (1998, p.167). Ironically, what had begun as a defensive determination to remain inhis own head—away from the difficulties he encountered in human inter-actions—ultimately served him well in his fight to remain firmly planted inboth internal and external realities.The road back from madness was a particularly treacherous one for Nash

because of his desire to preserve what he could of his mental faculties.Being ‘well’ did not consist of merely being grounded once again in con-sensual reality. As Nash described the precariousness of the ‘cure’: “Sup-pose you have an artist. He’s rational. But suppose he cannot paint. Hecannot function normally. Is it really a cure? Is it really salvation? . . . I feelI am not a good example of a person who recovered unless I can do somegood work” (Nasar, 1998, p. 382). For Nash, work seems to have been the

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great passion that made life worthwhile. In this, he is not alone: there is astate of absolute absorption into one’s activities that is intrinsically satisfy-ing. Csikszentmihalyi (1990) has described this as ‘flow,’ whereas Eigen(2001) describes it as ‘ecstasy.’ This level of engagement is not easy to giveup, even if the price is one’s sanity.Nash’s profound need to be able to become absorbed in his activities

fueled his ultimate recovery. For some time after his breakdown, Princetonprovided a kind of halfway house within which Nash was able to continueto communicate with others while traversing the line back to reality (Nasar,1998). His obsession with patterns brought him into intimate relationshipwith numerology and codes in which insanity and brilliance rubbed shoul-ders, with no clear dividing line between the two. Nash’s brilliance wassuch that, at times, it was difficult for his colleagues to follow his reasoning.Their incapacity was at times an indicator of his madness and at others anindicator of his genius. By intention, he seemed always to be working atthe edge of the impossible.In the containing environment that had been created for him at Prince-

ton, Nash was able to indulge in his passions while also attempting to com-municate with the world by leaving messages on blackboards. His love ofpattern, along with his incredible facility for numbers, resulted in his use ofnumbers to create codes and epigrams, which were then left as secret mes-sages for anyone who might be able to decode them. During this time, theline between brilliance and craziness rested on his grounding in reality. Asone of his colleagues put it, at times “he was doing the arithmetic correctly,but the reasoning for it was crazy” (Nasar, p. 334); at other times, he wasable to come up with ideas of astonishing brilliance and clarity.Nash’s facility with numbers seems to have been quite amazing. One

noted mathematician called Nash “the greatest numerologist the world hasever seen” (Nasar, 1998, p. 335), whereas another described him as “thekind of mathematician for whom the geometric, visual insight was thestrongest part of his talent. He would see a mathematical situation as apicture in his mind” (Nasar, 1998, p. 129). Many of Nash’s insights camefrom his intuitive sense that a complex, seemingly unsolvable problemcould be solved by reference to a more simple problem with the samepattern. He was able to “come into an office, stare at a blackboard densewith equations, and stand there silently, meditating. . . . Then . . . he’dsolve the whole thing. He could see the structure” (Nasar, 1998, p. 114).Many noted mathematicians were impressed by Nash’s audacity and alsoby the sheer beauty and simple elegance of some of his solutions. MikhailGromov, a noted geometer, put it: “Many of us have the power to developexisting ideas. We follow paths prepared by others. But most of us could

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never produce anything comparable to what Nash produced. It’s like light-ning striking” (Nasar, 1998, p. 158).These same gifts also fueled Nash’s madness, as the patterns he envi-

sioned became further and further divorced from consensual realities. Al-though Nash was ultimately able to move outside of his immersion in theworld of fantasy, he never entirely left the fantasies behind. In the film,Nash describes having learned to suppress or titrate his “appetite for pat-terns” in order to survive: “like a diet for the mind.” When asked if he findsthe fantasies difficult to live with, he responds: “I think that’s what it’s likewith all our dreams and all our nightmares. You’ve got to feed them forthem to stay alive.” “Don’t they haunt you?” he is asked. “They’re part ofmy past,” Nash responds. “The past always haunts you.” Later, Nash says:“I still see things that aren’t there. I just choose not to acknowledge them.”

THE NEED FOR RECOGNITION

We all have our demons. Our equilibrium depends on the extent towhich we can recognize them and put them to the side, where we mightlearn from them, but also keep them from taking over. In the absence ofinterpersonal acknowledgment, tensions between the will to create and de-fine the self, in opposition to the need to soothe and comfort the self, cancreate schisms in our reality. In our struggles to protect the self, defensivemeasures such as projective identification can result in distortions or canreach a point of actual personification, ‘peopling’ the universe, as depictedquite graphically in A Beautiful Mind. In projective identification, we seeas ‘other’ that which cannot be accepted within the bounds of self. In thisway, Nash’s imaginary companions may be seen as aspects of self, pro-jected out into his environment. As is often the case at this level of fantasy,the initial projections seem to have been relatively benign, but over timebegan to turn on him.Klein (1946/1975) notes how repudiated aspects of self become persecu-

tors, terrorizing us by their very existence. We project unwanted aspects ofself outward and identify them as other rather than self. This relieves us tosome measure: we are spared the pain of acknowledgment of the despisedcharacteristic. However, in perpetrating this lie, we tax our resources,which are strained in the maintenance of the deception. The lie continuallyyearns to right itself, and more and more energy is required in order to keepthe lie in place. In this way, our growth is severely impeded by this repudia-tion as we trip over our own distortions, leaving us no firm ground onwhich to walk. The only real resolution comes from some acknowledgmentof reality. Within the reality created in the film, the opportunity to anchor

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himself within consensual reality came for Nash through his own favouritemedium: that of the pattern—when he noted that the child with whom hehad been interacting for so many years had never grown. This fact becamea cornerstone upon which he could begin to ground his discriminationsbetween consensual and idiosyncratic realities.There was always a difficult balance between Nash’s need for accom-

plishment, depicted in the film as an even stronger need for recognition,and his tendency to retreat from the very world in which he sought ac-knowledgment. Avoidant defenses and interpersonal difficulties can keepthe individual from working through their needs for recognition at the levelof actual relationships. They then may be worked out intrapsychically orenacted via one’s vocation or other creative acts. The creative act repre-sents an affirmation of self. Without some acknowledgment from outside,however, it may be difficult to believe in the value of one’s products. Whenthe self has been both highly valued (leading to somewhat grandiose expec-tations) and de-valued, there may result a split, given these two opposingpoles that cannot be easily integrated.For example, Marta had received accolades early on for her accomplish-

ments but had fallen into a morass between her perceptions of others’ ex-pectations versus her own capacities. As a result, her creativity had beenlost to her for many years. Marta describes how, previous to our work to-gether, she had been unable to integrate information she received regardingher ‘talent’ because of the opposing awareness of her lack thereof. She hadhad the presumption that everyone else must have whatever she had: thesebecame the givens. It was only whatever she lacked that came under re-view.As we continued to work together and my acceptance of her began to

give her some grounding, Marta began to be able to truly hear some of theaffirmations she received regarding her own unique value as a person andas an artist. One colleague, who had hitherto been experienced as rejectingand condemning, was finally heard to say: “Not everyone can do that, youknow,” in response to Marta’s depiction of a highly creative resolution of adilemma.For Marta, being faced with the dilemma at all had been an essential

affirmation of her own incapacities, which completely discounted for herthe rather ingenious solution she had found. As she begins to more fullysee herself in all her complexity, she is able to ground herself in her talentsas well as her weaknesses and to enjoy working with and within them.What had been terrible, unendurable, annihilating steps toward doom(‘practicing’) now became, more truly, ‘playing,’ with attendant growth,creativity, and pleasure. Marta was beginning to find what she had lost,and this was experienced as a miraculous and delightful discovery.

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As Gadamer (1988) describes it, “the joy of recognition is . . . that morebecomes known than is already known” (p. 102). In order to make thisdiscovery, we must have some sense that we can be valued. The securecontainer (the “relationship that is being found to be reliable” [Winnicott,1971, p. 47]) provides a space within which we can become more than wehad been because we are invited to play out our potential self-representa-tions and thereby become more fully known to both self and other. In thisway, we can come to be in the moment in a way that facilitates develop-ment and creativity.Marta’s desires for recognition had been thwarted by her inability to use

her talents, out of fear that they might be seen as pathetic or repugnant.Her rediscovery of her creative abilities proceeded slowly, in arenas thatwere initially quite remote from her medium of choice. This titrated heranxiety and thereby allowed her greater freedom of movement than hadshe attempted to tackle the problem more directly. Marta’s capacities weresuch that she was able to excel in each of the successive arenas she choseand to derive satisfaction from the experience itself. This helped her tovalue her experience more greatly, rather than becoming lost in her desiresfor recognition. Paradoxically, as the external recognition became less im-portant, it became more apparent.In contrast, the excessiveness of Nash’s needs for recognition (along with

the hostility that tended to keep others at bay) seems to have weighted theprecarious balance he had found. As the end product became more andmore important, there were fewer rewards in the process itself. This seemsto have made it difficult for him to persist in his work without recedingfurther into fantasy, ultimately making the desired recognition even lesslikely. Without firm grounding in a medium that provides a vehicle throughwhich one can receive some acknowledgment, actual perceptual abilitiesmay become enacted without apparent purpose or meaning, a sad loss ofcreative potential. This makes it important to find a viable means for usingone’s abilities (an appropriate medium), rather than allowing ourselves toperpetuate this type of split, whereby the affirmation is provided in illusoryrealms and therefore concomitantly discounted.In the film A Beautiful Mind, we are invited into the moment of inspira-

tion as patterns begin to emerge for Nash from the complexity of the worldaround him. As we watch, the pattern begins to emerge from the massof numbers or letters and becomes illuminated: we are transfixed by thismiraculous accomplishment. This would seem to become the ‘fix’ thatNash is fed by. However, as the internal world comes to supercede theexternal one, ‘reality’ becomes a more and more potent persecutor, infiltrat-ing the internal world as well. Any defense has its good and its bad aspects.What begins as a way of saving the self becomes a prison of sorts, con-

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straining further growth. For Nash, the characters he created began as allies,offering companionship and affirming his value, but then began to turn onhim as the tension between inner and outer worlds increased.The absence of external recognition creates a difficult dilemma for the

artist, whose ‘genius’ may go unrecognized and be seen as madness, andthereby may come to be experienced as such. Many creative individualsexperience a deep split between the grandiose and vilified aspects of self:there is the sense of great capacity, but a failure to enact it in a satisfactorymanner. The line between genius and madness, for some, may be a matterof finding a safe enough haven via a ‘holding environment’ (for Nash: hiswife, Alicia, and Princeton) to enable the gifts to emerge.There is something so poignant in visioning the fine line between genius

and that edge too far. In A Beautiful Mind we are brought up to that line,where we might consider the importance of learning what we can andcannot do with our gifts: what we can and cannot survive. This issue hasbeen prominent in my work with Marta, who had spent many years tryingto find some responsive other who might understand her dilemma. It wasnot that she was depressed or could not function. To the contrary, that initself represented a danger: that she would continue through life withoutsuccessfully grappling with the fact that what is most important to her hadbecome inaccessible. Another potent hazard was found in those well-inten-tioned professionals who encouraged trials of medications that distancedher from her inner world, thereby further obstructing her path back towardher creativity, rather than facilitating it.In one session, Marta began to play on a thread regarding the importance

of self-disclosure, having read a headline in the New York Times toutingthe importance of this in the success of therapy. As she speaks of this, Iwonder where she is going with it, because I tell her nothing about myselfand she does not ask. However, she is speaking about something muchmore profound. She is telling me that she reads me in my face and knowsthat I am ‘with’ her. This is what allows her to tolerate the not-seeing of herthat she encounters daily. She can come back and look in my eyes andknow that she exists. What I disclose is recognition in the form of my owninternal aliveness and responsiveness as she recounts to me her thoughtsand experiences. What she might also read is my pained perplexity thatthis should be so extraordinary a thing to find in one’s analyst.One of the things that had kept Marta seeking out therapy, in spite of the

interactive failures she had encountered, was this need for recognition ofimportant aspects of self that had found insufficient expression in the exter-nal world. She had experienced tremendous enjoyment in her creative en-deavours as an adolescent, but had lost this capacity as she began to winawards. What had been produced in ‘play’ could not be accomplished by

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intention. As the ‘work’ of it superceded the ‘play’ of it, her relationshipwith music attenuated until what had been her dearest love and deepestjoy became the nightmare that haunted her waking life. Complicating thiswas the hostility and deprecation in her family toward the ‘loser’; Martacould not win without destroying the other.Marta finally divorced herself from this nightmare by divorcing herself

from her creative desires. In this way, she made her peace with existencebut at a huge price to self. As Marta talks about what is missing in her life,it is difficult to follow her for we are on the track of something that is trulyand profoundly ‘missing.’ In many ways it does not exist: as she gets closerto her creative desires, the desire itself slips away, and she finds herselfabsorbed in something—anything—else.It has been perplexing to listen to Marta talk about her complete lack of

distress or desire in relation to her art, alongside her insistence that this isthe only thing that really matters to her in life. She described how herprevious therapists had urged her to turn her interests in other directions.They had not taken seriously her urgency to be able to create once again,but rather had treated her as though she was ‘crazy,’ even urging her tostop working at all and go on ‘disability’ as a way of surviving. This sugges-tion affirmed for Marta her utter intangibility to the other, reinforcing herterror of discovering that she might, indeed, be as insubstantial as she wasbeing seen.

PATTERNS AS UNITS OF MEANING

For many gifted individuals, there is a heightened capacity to see, utilize,and integrate pattern (Charles, forthcoming, b; Ehrenzweig, 1967). Just asmathematics is fundamentally about patterns, so, too, is dance, as well asthe music that underlies it. In each of these, the patterning of the elementscomes to carry meanings that may be highly nuanced and subtle and yetprofoundly communicative, to one who is absorbed in that particular ‘lan-guage.’ Marta’s inability to come to terms with her performance problemsmade the world of dance and music highly inaccessible to her. Her aver-sion of both self and product had made even the act of listening to musican abhorrent reminder of the inaccessibility of her art. She has spent manyof the years in which the play of it had been out of reach, studying bothdance and music as patterned phenomena. Her understanding and appreci-ation of the nuance and subtleties inherent in the structure and formal ele-ments of these is quite profound.Nash, too, seems to have been drawn to patterned forms. At Princeton,

he was often seen riding a bicycle in ever-narrowing concentric circles andfigure eights (Nasar, 1998). He is also said to have spent many hours at the

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music library at Princeton listening to Bach and Mozart and to have beencontinually whistling passages from Bach’s fugues (Nasar, 1998). It may behis basic affinity for patterns that drew Nash to Bach, a composer whosework is highly and elaborately structured. Bach’s fugues and canons maybe seen as derivations of basic themes, in accordance with rules requiringgreat complexity of thought. Bach’s permutations of fundamental patternsof pure tone seem to have had particular appeal for Nash (Nasar, 1998).Hofstadter’s (1979) description of Bach’s extraordinary mental capacity

(in regard to Bach’s having improvised a six-part fugue for Frederick theGreat) bears some resemblance to descriptions of Nash: “One could proba-bly liken the task of improvising a six-part fugue to the playing of sixtysimultaneous blindfold games of chess, and winning them all” (p. 7). Bachmust have appealed to Nash’s love of ‘the game,’ as well as his love ofpattern, in that one finds in Bach’s use of counterpoint that “many ideasand forms have been woven together, and . . . playful double meanings andsubtle allusions are commonplace” (p. 10).Nash’s ability to read pattern was quite exceptional. However, as we

develop, we all learn to read pattern above and beyond the content ofa given communication (Charles, forthcoming, b). One way of trying tounderstand this is to look at amodal communication processes, in which itis the patterning of the elements that comes to carry meaning, rather thanthe mode of delivery. This type of communication is seen in interactionsbetween infants and their caregivers, as information is passed back andforth in varying modalities. For example, the infant’s cry of distress maybe imitated and attenuated by the mother, in the initial firmness and thenincreasingly more soothing manner of her touch. We can also see in thisexample an implicit act of recognition, as the mother acknowledges theinfant’s distress before moving toward containment.Amodal processing would seem to be a rudimentary form of symbol ma-

nipulation, in which there is a displacement from one sensory modality toanother. This type of symbol manipulation becomes a precursor for theability to transpose between mental modalities as well (Kumin, 1996). Aslanguage comes to the fore, ‘naming’ the elements provides a means formaking explicit categorical distinctions, which facilitate these very discrimi-nations as well as our ability to communicate with one another in referenceto them. The use of language, however, may also constrain the possiblemeanings of these elements, thereby limiting our conceptualizations as wellas our creativity.The ability to discern patterns would seem to be an innate aspect of our

inheritance as human beings. Infant research documents our inherent abil-ity to discern categories across multiple domains through our perceptionsof distinct characteristics, such as orientation, angle, hue, and form (Quinn,

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1994). As development proceeds, so does the infant’s capacity to attend toand discriminate between a wider range of perceptual features (Cooper andAslin, 1994). Development also brings greater differential responsivenessto specific patternings, such as pitch contours (Fernald, 1993; Papousek,Bornstein, Nuzzo, Papousek, and Symmes, 1990). At the nonverbal level,we learn to process an extensive array of perceptual stimuli and to derivemeanings that may inform our understandings without necessarily beingaccessible to conscious awareness. Indeed, the lack of accessibility to con-scious awareness seems to increase the speed and efficiency of these typesof patterned connections that underlie our implicit understandings.These types of understandings seem to work on a basic, essentially sim-

ple system much like that of the computer: a system of yes versus no; sameversus different, much as Matte-Blanco (1975) describes in his expositionsof the principles of symmetry and asymmetry. Symmetrical logic groundsus through the identifications based on noting similarities, whereas it isthrough secondary process that we make more explicit sense of our experi-ence by establishing distinctions between like things. The tension betweenthese two modes of perception would seem to be fundamental to the cre-ative enterprise, which requires the ability to organize, integrate, and recon-textualize information within and between these two domains (Charles,forthcoming, b; Ehrenzweig, 1967). These essential principles of samenessand difference also order our sense of being and belonging in the relationalworld and are at times at odds with one another, as we come to standseparate and apart from—but ever in relation to—the collective other.

THE GROUP AND THE ‘NEW IDEA’

As we move into the realm of novel productions, there is an essentialdilemma in that we are provided fewer opportunities for reality testing. Bydefinition, we have moved beyond the bounds of accepted realities. Ourimaginations are taxed by the ‘new idea’ and we look for affirmation thatthe task is worth the effort. There seems to be an inherent dialectic betweenthe more conservative elements that secure consensual knowledge and thegrowth potential that is inherent in challenges to the prevailing wisdoms.Bion (1970) describes the tensions that arise between consensual realitiesand the novel in terms of relationships between the ‘Establishment’ and the‘Mystic’: the purveyor of the new idea to the group.Nash and Marta each seem to fit Bion’s (1970) definition of the ‘mystic’

as one who could know truth without needing to think about it. This entailsthe capacity to believe in one’s self and one’s own vision in the face ofalternate realities; a precarious position for both Nash and Marta, each intheir own ways. According to Bion, the defining characteristic of the mystic

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is the ability to truly be oneself, even in the midst of a group. Arieti (1976)has described this capacity as one of the essential stimulating factors ofcreativity.From Bion’s (1970) perspective, there is an essential narcissism intrinsic

to the role of the mystic. Whereas the group reserves for God the possibilityof knowing truth for one’s self, the mystic “needs to reassert a direct experi-ence of god of which he has been, and is, deprived by the institutionalizedgroup” (p. 77). This type of deprivation may be seen as an essential aspectof Nash’s relationship with the group from which he elicits both envy anddeprecation.Although the group needs the mystic for his or her essential revitalizing

functions, it is also inevitably resistant to change. In spite of this inherenttension, the mystic and the group are vital to one another: “the Establish-ment cannot be dispensed with . . . because the institutionalized group . . .is as essential to the development of the individual, including the mystic,as he is to it” (Bion, 1970, p. 75). The mystic is both needed and feared bythe group, exacerbating the tension between the two, as the mystic intrudeson the complacency of the group, exerting a nihilistic force: “the nature ofhis contribution is certain to be destructive of the laws, conventions, cul-ture, and therefore coherence, of a group” (Bion, 1970, p. 64). Without thenew idea, however, the group becomes stagnant and atrophies toward itsown destruction (Charles, 2002).We use status and credentials as guideposts on our way, telling us what

is worthy or unworthy of our attention. Our dilemma is amplified by ourdifficulty in understanding concepts that are multidimensional (Matte-Blanco, 1975, 1988). Nash, for example, taxed the imaginations of themathematical community by attempting to link manifolds to ‘algebraic vari-eties,’ a simpler class. “Loosely speaking, Nash asserted that for any mani-fold it was possible to find an algebraic variety one of whose parts corre-sponded in some essential way to the original object. To do this, he showed,one has to go to higher dimensions” (Nasar, 2002, p. xxi).Moving into the domain of higher dimensions appears to be particularly

taxing for human consciousness. One of the difficulties inherent in concep-tualizing complex processes is that we become blind to important facets ofreality that move beyond our purview by virtue of the limitations inherentin our frame of reference. This means that the reality of an exceptionalmind, such as that of Nash or Marta, may be quite different in fundamentalrespects from the reality of one whose thinking is more highly constrained.Given this, there may be times when what appears at first sight to be mad-ness might actually be the product of a higher level of consciousness.Many new ideas in the history of science have been forestalled by their

incomprehensibility within the context of the prevailing ‘wisdom.’ One dif-

A BEAUTIFUL MIND 35

ficulty is that we tend to remain unaware of the limitations imposed by ourframe of reference until we are able to encounter the limit itself. For exam-ple, if we are shown a photograph of a common object in uncommon pro-portions, we may have difficulty ‘reading’ the image unless we are cued byadditional verbal or other contextual information that reframes the imageand enables us to read it differently.The constraints imposed by limits of this nature may be particularly rele-

vant to the understanding of the ‘irrational.’ Some knowledge is more accessi-ble through the nonverbal, intuitive domains than through the conscious,rational mind. Indeed, some of our greatest achievements are ‘discovered’rather than more explicitly being ‘thought.’ However, much of our implicitknowledge may be inaccessible without sufficient contextual informationto provide the cues necessary for retrieval.Nonverbal and unconscious processes seem to be accessible in different

ways than our more rational thoughts. Matte-Blanco (1988) suggests thatthe reason for this is that they operate “in a space of a higher number ofdimensions than that of our perceptions and conscious thinking” (p. 91)and thereby lend themselves to greater complexity of thought than thatwhich might be derived through more rational means. As a result, inspira-tion often comes in the form of pattern, leaving us with the dilemma ofdiscovering the words that might best characterize and communicate themeanings denoted by that pattern (Charles, forthcoming, b). For example,Einstein is quoted as saying: “I very rarely think in words at all. A thoughtcomes and I may try to express it in words afterwards. . . . All our thinkingis in the nature of a free play of concepts” (Opatow, 1997, p. 292).Nash, himself, was aware of the dilemma imposed by the conflicting

needs to stay within and outside the bounds of ‘reason.’ After having lostseveral decades of his productivity, he was determined to stay within thebounds of the rational, but also aware of the cost:

One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person’sconception of his relation to the cosmos. For example, a non-Zoroastrian couldthink of Zarathustra as simply a madman who led millions of naive followers toadopt a cult of ritual fire worship. But without his “madness” Zarathustra wouldnecessarily have been only another of the millions or billions of human individu-als who would have lived and then been forgotten. (Nash, 2002, p. 10)

Nash’s genius seems to have made the road to acceptance within thegroup a particularly precarious one. One of the difficulties for the novelthinker is to find a place for himself within the group without destroyinghis creativity. Nash’s narcissism complicated this endeavour, as he continu-ally set himself aside and apart from others. He seems to have had a great

36 CHARLES

deal of difficulty allowing anyone else to be the focus of attention in anypositive way, which impoverished his relationships.From another perspective, many of Marta’s interpersonal frustrations can

be linked to her inability to value and even to sustain her sense of self inthe presence of uncomprehending others. This dilemma so disrupted herequilibrium that most of her energies were lost in efforts that became moreimpossible as she invested in relationships that became increasinglystrained and unattainable. Without the ability to value herself and the prod-ucts of her own mind and being, she became profoundly lost and utterlydesolate in the face of the lack of comprehension of the other. Marta tellsme that even though in some part of herself she was able to maintain asense of her own reality when it was thus challenged, it had no value forher in the moment of being unable to find recognition in the other.Ultimately, it would seem to be this recognition, which Nash was able

to find in the profound respect of his colleagues for his gifts and talents,and Marta was able to ultimately find through psychoanalysis, that pro-vided sufficient containment to enable each to find a home within the so-cial world. This is not so different from that which we provide for all of ourpatients—some balance of recognition of whatever is unique with sufficientreality testing to provide individual with further resources with which tonegotiate the edges of their own limits.

Acknowledgments. The author would like to extend her gratitude to an unknownreviewer for the facilitative effects of the very thoughtful and constructive commentsgiven in response to an earlier draft of this paper.

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