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A beautiful mind.

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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 particular
hazard for the analyst, whose failure to recognize real potential can result in undermining the
individual’s developmental strivings. This dilemma is explored through a case illustration of a
woman whose creativity was undermined by a lack of recognition. To vivify the dilemma, the
author invites the reader to look through her eyes into the lens offered by the film A Beautiful
Mind, 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 illustrations
encourage us to consider the dilemma of the gifted individual when excessive tension arises
between 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. As

analysts, we are in a position to encounter the incredible beauty of the
mind itself as we follow our patients’ associations from conception to con-
ception, across disparate points to an unanticipated end. At times we also
find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of being unable to discriminate
the fine line between truth and fiction, reality and distortion; a dilemma
that can be particularly problematic when dealing with highly creative indi-
viduals. This dilemma is exemplified quite vividly in Ron Howard’s film A
Beautiful Mind, which portrays the struggle of Nobel Prize-winning mathe-
matician John Nash to maintain his sanity while also testing the limits of
his 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 facility
enabled him to come up with theories of far-reaching consequence. How-
ever, his thirst for opportunities 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

Marilyn Charles, Training and Supervising Analyst, Michigan Psychoanalytic Council; Adjunct
Professor, 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
22 CHARLES

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 ‘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, 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 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 interpersonal
world. These two disparate paths may be usefully viewed as a function of
what Rosenfeld (1971) calls destructive versus libidinal envy. This terminol-
ogy marks the important distinction between recognition of the other’s gifts
in a positive sense versus the type of destructive envy that tends to deny
and annihilate the other (Etchegoyen, Lopez, and Rabih, 1987). Each of
these paths represents an attempt to grapple with the fact of otherness and
with the question as to how one might equilibrate one’s self in a world in
which one is different in important ways.
For Marta, for example, difference had become the essential factor that
 A BEAUTIFUL MIND 23

marked her as abhorrent and devalued. This had made it difficult for her to
utilize her creative talents in productive ways. The price of acceptance
seemed 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 had
merely exacerbated this dilemma, as her encounters with professionals who
were not able to envision her creative potential—but rather treated her as
though 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 cinema

screen, we are confronted quite graphically with the dilemma of the line
between reality and fiction. It is the artistry of the filmmakers that enables
us to vicariously experience Nash’s world, through their creation of a newly
composed 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 the
reality so constructed that amplifies the illusion of truth in this type of film,
which structures itself around a real life without necessarily following the
facts 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, reflected
on, and better understood. However, it also provides a means for promoting
distortions and misperceptions on a wide scale. At the very core of our love
affair with the cinema is our ability to identify and disidentify with the
characters on the screen. In psychoanalytic terms, identification is defined
as a process of assimilation, whereby attributes of the other are transformed
and adapted into aspects of self, such that “it is by means of a series of
identifications that the personality is constituted and specified” (Laplanche
and 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 that
absorption into the film provides a means for self-development through the
intertwining 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) to
describe a process in which “one gives oneself up to it with all one’s
thought 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-
24 CHARLES

tory process within the world of film, in which the viewer is invited in as a
spectator/participant within the drama unfolding. Through this process, the
beholder is both inside and outside the film through identifications with the
camera/director and with the characters being represented. The successful
film absorbs us: it holds us in its thrall: we are captured by whatever is
being 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 the
film (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 lend
fire to his creativity also endanger his very being. It is also an apt metaphor
for Nash’s creative genius, which is of the intuitive variety. “Nash saw the
vision first, constructing the laborious proofs long afterward. But even after
he’d try to explain some astonishing result, the actual route he had taken
remained 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 in
his own visions, which enabled him to make his great contributions but
also entrapped him. When asked by Harvard Professor George Mackey
how a man of science could have believed in such fantasies as extraterres-
trial messengers, Nash replied quite simply: “Because . . . the ideas I had
about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical
ideas 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 are

linked 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 primitiveness
of the defenses—such as splitting and defensive denial—grandiose fanta-
sies may coexist with feelings of inferiority without apparently conflicting
with 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 are
serious 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
 A BEAUTIFUL MIND 25

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 acute
isolation (Storr, 1972). For example, Nash’s fantasies may have initially pro-
vided him with some relief of the tension between his intense isolation and
yearnings for recognition. However, peopling the universe with figments of
one’s imagination merely compounds the dilemma, as yearnings for com-
panionship become diverted into autistic pursuits rather than being directed
toward building actual relationships. In addition, there is a protective part
of 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’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
I am lost, lost completely in the wilderness . . . so, it’s been a hard life in
many 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. In
this endeavour, his creativity served him well, providing him with a means
for navigating within a difficult world. As Nasar puts it: “His overriding
interest was in patterns, not people, and his greatest need was making sense
of 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 in
his own head—away from the difficulties he encountered in human inter-
actions—ultimately served him well in his fight to remain firmly planted in
both 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. He
cannot function normally. Is it really a cure? Is it really salvation? . . . I feel
I am not a good example of a person who recovered unless I can do some
good work” (Nasar, 1998, p. 382). For Nash, work seems to have been the
26 CHARLES

great passion that made life worthwhile. In this, he is not alone: there is a
state 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 give
up, 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, Princeton
provided a kind of halfway house within which Nash was able to continue
to communicate with others while traversing the line back to reality (Nasar,
1998). His obsession with patterns brought him into intimate relationship
with numerology and codes in which insanity and brilliance rubbed shoul-
ders, with no clear dividing line between the two. Nash’s brilliance was
such 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 an
indicator of his genius. By intention, he seemed always to be working at
the 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 of
pattern, along with his incredible facility for numbers, resulted in his use of
numbers 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, the
line between brilliance and craziness rested on his grounding in reality. As
one 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 was
able 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 has
ever seen” (Nasar, 1998, p. 335), whereas another described him as “the
kind of mathematician for whom the geometric, visual insight was the
strongest part of his talent. He would see a mathematical situation as a
picture in his mind” (Nasar, 1998, p. 129). Many of Nash’s insights came
from his intuitive sense that a complex, seemingly unsolvable problem
could be solved by reference to a more simple problem with the same
pattern. He was able to “come into an office, stare at a blackboard dense
with equations, and stand there silently, meditating. . . . Then . . . he’d
solve the whole thing. He could see the structure” (Nasar, 1998, p. 114).
Many noted mathematicians were impressed by Nash’s audacity and also
by the sheer beauty and simple elegance of some of his solutions. Mikhail
Gromov, a noted geometer, put it: “Many of us have the power to develop
existing ideas. We follow paths prepared by others. But most of us could
 A BEAUTIFUL MIND 27

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 the
world 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 finds
the fantasies difficult to live with, he responds: “I think that’s what it’s like
with all our dreams and all our nightmares. You’ve got to feed them for
them to stay alive.” “Don’t they haunt you?” he is asked. “They’re part of
my 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 to

which we can recognize them and put them to the side, where we might
learn from them, but also keep them from taking over. In the absence of
interpersonal acknowledgment, tensions between the will to create and de-
fine the self, in opposition to the need to soothe and comfort the self, can
create schisms in our reality. In our struggles to protect the self, defensive
measures such as projective identification can result in distortions or can
reach a point of actual personification, ‘peopling’ the universe, as depicted
quite graphically in A Beautiful Mind. In projective identification, we see
as ‘other’ that which cannot be accepted within the bounds of self. In this
way, 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 time
began 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 of
self outward and identify them as other rather than self. This relieves us to
some measure: we are spared the pain of acknowledgment of the despised
characteristic. However, in perpetrating this lie, we tax our resources,
which are strained in the maintenance of the deception. The lie continually
yearns to right itself, and more and more energy is required in order to keep
the 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 on
which to walk. The only real resolution comes from some acknowledgment
of reality. Within the reality created in the film, the opportunity to anchor
28 CHARLES

himself within consensual reality came for Nash through his own favourite
medium: that of the pattern—when he noted that the child with whom he
had been interacting for so many years had never grown. This fact became
a cornerstone upon which he could begin to ground his discriminations
between 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 keep
the individual from working through their needs for recognition at the level
of actual relationships. They then may be worked out intrapsychically or
enacted 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. When
the self has been both highly valued (leading to somewhat grandiose expec-
tations) and de-valued, there may result a split, given these two opposing
poles 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 been
lost to her for many years. Marta describes how, previous to our work to-
gether, she had been unable to integrate information she received regarding
her ‘talent’ because of the opposing awareness of her lack thereof. She had
had the presumption that everyone else must have whatever she had: these
became 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 the
affirmations she received regarding her own unique value as a person and
as an artist. One colleague, who had hitherto been experienced as rejecting
and condemning, was finally heard to say: “Not everyone can do that, you
know,” in response to Marta’s depiction of a highly creative resolution of a
dilemma.
For Marta, being faced with the dilemma at all had been an essential
affirmation of her own incapacities, which completely discounted for her
the rather ingenious solution she had found. As she begins to more fully
see herself in all her complexity, she is able to ground herself in her talents
as 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.
 A BEAUTIFUL MIND 29

As Gadamer (1988) describes it, “the joy of recognition is . . . that more

becomes known than is already known” (p. 102). In order to make this
discovery, we must have some sense that we can be valued. The secure
container (the “relationship that is being found to be reliable” [Winnicott,
1971, p. 47]) provides a space within which we can become more than we
had 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 this
way, 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 that
were initially quite remote from her medium of choice. This titrated her
anxiety and thereby allowed her greater freedom of movement than had
she attempted to tackle the problem more directly. Marta’s capacities were
such that she was able to excel in each of the successive arenas she chose
and to derive satisfaction from the experience itself. This helped her to
value her experience more greatly, rather than becoming lost in her desires
for 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 the
precarious balance he had found. As the end product became more and
more important, there were fewer rewards in the process itself. This seems
to have made it difficult for him to persist in his work without receding
further into fantasy, ultimately making the desired recognition even less
likely. Without firm grounding in a medium that provides a vehicle through
which one can receive some acknowledgment, actual perceptual abilities
may become enacted without apparent purpose or meaning, a sad loss of
creative potential. This makes it important to find a viable means for using
one’s abilities (an appropriate medium), rather than allowing ourselves to
perpetuate this type of split, whereby the affirmation is provided in illusory
realms 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 world
around him. As we watch, the pattern begins to emerge from the mass
of numbers or letters and becomes illuminated: we are transfixed by this
miraculous accomplishment. This would seem to become the ‘fix’ that
Nash is fed by. However, as the internal world comes to supercede the
external 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-
30 CHARLES

straining further growth. For Nash, the characters he created began as allies,
offering companionship and affirming his value, but then began to turn on
him 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, and
thereby may come to be experienced as such. Many creative individuals
experience 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 satisfactory
manner. The line between genius and madness, for some, may be a matter
of finding a safe enough haven via a ‘holding environment’ (for Nash: his
wife, 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 and
cannot do with our gifts: what we can and cannot survive. This issue has
been prominent in my work with Marta, who had spent many years trying
to find some responsive other who might understand her dilemma. It was
not that she was depressed or could not function. To the contrary, that in
itself represented a danger: that she would continue through life without
successfully grappling with the fact that what is most important to her had
become inaccessible. Another potent hazard was found in those well-inten-
tioned professionals who encouraged trials of medications that distanced
her from her inner world, thereby further obstructing her path back toward
her 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 touting
the importance of this in the success of therapy. As she speaks of this, I
wonder where she is going with it, because I tell her nothing about myself
and she does not ask. However, she is speaking about something much
more profound. She is telling me that she reads me in my face and knows
that I am ‘with’ her. This is what allows her to tolerate the not-seeing of her
that she encounters daily. She can come back and look in my eyes and
know that she exists. What I disclose is recognition in the form of my own
internal aliveness and responsiveness as she recounts to me her thoughts
and experiences. What she might also read is my pained perplexity that
this 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 of
important 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 win
awards. What had been produced in ‘play’ could not be accomplished by
 A BEAUTIFUL MIND 31

intention. As the ‘work’ of it superceded the ‘play’ of it, her relationship

with music attenuated until what had been her dearest love and deepest
joy became the nightmare that haunted her waking life. Complicating this
was the hostility and deprecation in her family toward the ‘loser’; Marta
could 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 existence
but 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 truly
and profoundly ‘missing.’ In many ways it does not exist: as she gets closer
to her creative desires, the desire itself slips away, and she finds herself
absorbed 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 is
the only thing that really matters to her in life. She described how her
previous 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 to
stop 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 her
terror of discovering that she might, indeed, be as insubstantial as she was
being 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 as
mathematics is fundamentally about patterns, so, too, is dance, as well as
the music that underlies it. In each of these, the patterning of the elements
comes to carry meanings that may be highly nuanced and subtle and yet
profoundly communicative, to one who is absorbed in that particular ‘lan-
guage.’ Marta’s inability to come to terms with her performance problems
made 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 music
an abhorrent reminder of the inaccessibility of her art. She has spent many
of the years in which the play of it had been out of reach, studying both
dance 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 and
figure eights (Nasar, 1998). He is also said to have spent many hours at the
32 CHARLES

music library at Princeton listening to Bach and Mozart and to have been
continually whistling passages from Bach’s fugues (Nasar, 1998). It may be
his basic affinity for patterns that drew Nash to Bach, a composer whose
work is highly and elaborately structured. Bach’s fugues and canons may
be seen as derivations of basic themes, in accordance with rules requiring
great complexity of thought. Bach’s permutations of fundamental patterns
of 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 the
Great) bears some resemblance to descriptions of Nash: “One could proba-
bly liken the task of improvising a six-part fugue to the playing of sixty
simultaneous blindfold games of chess, and winning them all” (p. 7). Bach
must have appealed to Nash’s love of ‘the game,’ as well as his love of
pattern, in that one finds in Bach’s use of counterpoint that “many ideas
and forms have been woven together, and . . . playful double meanings and
subtle 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 of
a given communication (Charles, forthcoming, b). One way of trying to
understand this is to look at amodal communication processes, in which it
is the patterning of the elements that comes to carry meaning, rather than
the mode of delivery. This type of communication is seen in interactions
between infants and their caregivers, as information is passed back and
forth in varying modalities. For example, the infant’s cry of distress may
be imitated and attenuated by the mother, in the initial firmness and then
increasingly more soothing manner of her touch. We can also see in this
example an implicit act of recognition, as the mother acknowledges the
infant’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 to
another. This type of symbol manipulation becomes a precursor for the
ability to transpose between mental modalities as well (Kumin, 1996). As
language comes to the fore, ‘naming’ the elements provides a means for
making explicit categorical distinctions, which facilitate these very discrimi-
nations as well as our ability to communicate with one another in reference
to them. The use of language, however, may also constrain the possible
meanings of these elements, thereby limiting our conceptualizations as well
as 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 perceptions
of distinct characteristics, such as orientation, angle, hue, and form (Quinn,
 A BEAUTIFUL MIND 33

1994). As development proceeds, so does the infant’s capacity to attend to

and discriminate between a wider range of perceptual features (Cooper and
Aslin, 1994). Development also brings greater differential responsiveness
to 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 derive
meanings that may inform our understandings without necessarily being
accessible to conscious awareness. Indeed, the lack of accessibility to con-
scious awareness seems to increase the speed and efficiency of these types
of 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; same
versus different, much as Matte-Blanco (1975) describes in his expositions
of the principles of symmetry and asymmetry. Symmetrical logic grounds
us through the identifications based on noting similarities, whereas it is
through secondary process that we make more explicit sense of our experi-
ence by establishing distinctions between like things. The tension between
these 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 sameness
and difference also order our sense of being and belonging in the relational
world and are at times at odds with one another, as we come to stand
separate 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 essential

dilemma in that we are provided fewer opportunities for reality testing. By
definition, we have moved beyond the bounds of accepted realities. Our
imaginations are taxed by the ‘new idea’ and we look for affirmation that
the task is worth the effort. There seems to be an inherent dialectic between
the more conservative elements that secure consensual knowledge and the
growth potential that is inherent in challenges to the prevailing wisdoms.
Bion (1970) describes the tensions that arise between consensual realities
and 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 entails
the capacity to believe in one’s self and one’s own vision in the face of
alternate realities; a precarious position for both Nash and Marta, each in
their own ways. According to Bion, the defining characteristic of the mystic
34 CHARLES

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 of
creativity.
From Bion’s (1970) perspective, there is an essential narcissism intrinsic
to the role of the mystic. Whereas the group reserves for God the possibility
of 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 institutionalized
group” (p. 77). This type of deprivation may be seen as an essential aspect
of Nash’s relationship with the group from which he elicits both envy and
deprecation.
Although the group needs the mystic for his or her essential revitalizing
functions, it is also inevitably resistant to change. In spite of this inherent
tension, 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 by
the group, exacerbating the tension between the two, as the mystic intrudes
on the complacency of the group, exerting a nihilistic force: “the nature of
his contribution is certain to be destructive of the laws, conventions, cul-
ture, and therefore coherence, of a group” (Bion, 1970, p. 64). Without the
new idea, however, the group becomes stagnant and atrophies toward its
own 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 our
difficulty in understanding concepts that are multidimensional (Matte-
Blanco, 1975, 1988). Nash, for example, taxed the imaginations of the
mathematical 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 of
reality that move beyond our purview by virtue of the limitations inherent
in our frame of reference. This means that the reality of an exceptional
mind, such as that of Nash or Marta, may be quite different in fundamental
respects 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 our

frame 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 by
additional verbal or other contextual information that reframes the image
and 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 implicit
knowledge may be inaccessible without sufficient contextual information
to 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 that
the reason for this is that they operate “in a space of a higher number of
dimensions than that of our perceptions and conscious thinking” (p. 91)
and thereby lend themselves to greater complexity of thought than that
which might be derived through more rational means. As a result, inspira-
tion often comes in the form of pattern, leaving us with the dilemma of
discovering the words that might best characterize and communicate the
meanings denoted by that pattern (Charles, forthcoming, b). For example,
Einstein is quoted as saying: “I very rarely think in words at all. A thought
comes and I may try to express it in words afterwards. . . . All our thinking
is 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 lost
several decades of his productivity, he was determined to stay within the
bounds of the rational, but also aware of the cost:

One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person’s

conception of his relation to the cosmos. For example, a non-Zoroastrian could
think of Zarathustra as simply a madman who led millions of naive followers to
adopt a cult of ritual fire worship. But without his “madness” Zarathustra would
necessarily 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 the
group a particularly precarious one. One of the difficulties for the novel
thinker is to find a place for himself within the group without destroying
his 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 any

positive 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 in
the presence of uncomprehending others. This dilemma so disrupted her
equilibrium that most of her energies were lost in efforts that became more
impossible as she invested in relationships that became increasingly
strained and unattainable. Without the ability to value herself and the prod-
ucts of her own mind and being, she became profoundly lost and utterly
desolate in the face of the lack of comprehension of the other. Marta tells
me that even though in some part of herself she was able to maintain a
sense of her own reality when it was thus challenged, it had no value for
her 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 our
patients—some balance of recognition of whatever is unique with sufficient
reality testing to provide individual with further resources with which to
negotiate the edges of their own limits.

Acknowledgments. The author would like to extend her gratitude to an unknown

reviewer for the facilitative effects of the very thoughtful and constructive comments
given in response to an earlier draft of this paper.

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