Do any of you think that John Forbes Nash of "A Beautiful Mind" was possibly really seeing spirits?

Question

iF NOT..can you give some kind of "proof" that he wasn't ?

Answer 1

No, he was brainwashed and they were feeding him thoughts.  That's why it was so sad.

Answer 2

He was brilliantly mad and schizophrenic.

Answer 3

no he was delusional  not seeing spirits

Answer 4

No.

After many thousands of hours of paranormal research, no proof has ever been given for 'spirits'.

Read the "The Hundredth Monkey and Other Paradigms of the Paranormal" or "Demon-Haunted World" to get your head on straight about 'spirits'.

Take care.

Answer 5

Well, there really is no reason to believe that he was seeing spirits when imaginary companions were a known symptom of his mental illness. In other words, there already was a natural and likely explanation for his imaginary companions, so why invent a spirit explanation?

Can I prove it? No. Perhaps his therapists or those close to him could. However, absolute proof in anything except math and liquor is awfully hard to come by, as a general rule. And as Lithium said, the burden of proof is on the ones making the claim. Psychologists bear the burden of proof for saying patients such as Nash see imaginary people, and they do bear that burden with much evidence and case studies. Those who instead say they were spirits likewise bear a burden of proof, so Denie the burden is on you to show this, not on the answerers to disprove it.

Answer 6

Not at all. He was the combined product of intelligence, education, hubris, and a bit of mental disease all run amok.

The fact that in later life he was able to confront his condition and differientiate from reality and delusion, even with considerable effort, shows that he was mentaly ill rather than insane.

Answer 7

Sometimes, I think, that the "spirits" seen by certain people who may or may not have a chemical imbalance due to schizophrenia, are actually caused by the electrical firing that may occur in the atmosphere and are only visible to people who are on a different wave-length, so to speak.  The ability to see them, does not make the images they see any less chaotic or unrelated.

Answer 8

no. i believe those were his multiple personalities.

Answer 9

Schizophrenia symptoms are analogous to most paranormal events.

Very unlikely,

Answer 10

I doubt it.

However, psychiatry is based in science. No allowance is made for the (surely not) existence of spirits. There is no way to reproduce the phenomena, therefore schizophrenia is concluded to be disease and visions hallucinations or delusions.

This question is really one for philosophy. Theory of knowledge, epistemology.

Answer 11

NO, because the "spirit" would have had to follow him from college to his job, to his home etc.  I think a spirit would stay in one location, where something sorta holds him there. That's just my opinion.  It was an awesome movie.

Answer 12

No, he was actually being mindprobed by aliens.  That's what caused the schizo behavior.  They were scrambling his memories...

There are no such thing as spirits or ghosts, because when you die, you die.  There is no afterlife.  

However, there are aliens among us.  They live normal lives, as we do, while probing our thoughts, and documenting our lives.  They are "sleepers" who live among us, observing and doing research, waiting for orders to move against us...

Spooky...

Answer 13

Schizophrenic delusions are an adequate explanation so there is no need to invoke "spirits" as an alternate explanation.

Answer 14

Nope! I would say what he claims to see is very demonic! I could only tell him, and, his likes, such as maybe yourself to repent, or perrish.

God hates all sin, even that of witchcraft, and yet he loves sinners so much that he sent his only son, Jesus, to die for all of our sins.

Answer 15

he had schizophrenia.

he was imagining everything.

Answer 16

I think it's possible but very unlikely.  But I do believe there are SOME people diagnosed as schizophrenic who may really need an exorcism, not medication.

Answer 17

The guy was mentally ill!  If you (god forbid) suffer from paranoid delusions, maybe you will see spirits too.....

Answer 18

Nash was not seeing spirits.  He was simply imagining/hallucinating the characters.

The burden of proof falls on the one making the extraordinary claim.  If I claim there is a talking gargoyle living in my closet, it is not your duty to prove that it doesn't exist.  Rather, it is my duty to prove it does exist, because I am the one making the extraordinary claim.

Answer 19

nope

Answer 20

I absolutely believe it.

And in spirits...

Answer 21

Wow, I actually watched that movie last night.

But I personally believe he was seeing things..unless everyone was lying to him(why would they?) he would have to have been crazy.

No one else claimed to see his "friends" or ever met them.

In real life I have no idea. But thats my take on the movie.

Answer 22

Once again no, he had schizophrenia and all of those "spirits" were just in his mind. I know first hand because my dad had schizophrenia and when he didn't take his medication he would act just like John Forbes.

Answer 23

No, what he had was a known psychological disorder, although not so common. If you remember from the movie, he believed they were actual people in his life, therefore they couldnt have been dead people. Plus, if are going to use the Bible, then it does say in the Bible that the dead do not return to live amongst the living. I believe Job 7 is one of the places that talks about that.

If they were spirits of another sort, they could not be Angels, because God would not allow his servants to sin. Deception and lies would be the work of the devil.

Answer 24

No because schizophrenics usually start having thoughts about government conspiracy, people are spying on them and out to get them, etc. and become a danger to themselves and often others - He is not typical as a schizophrenic because he fought the delusions and kept them at bay!

I've seen spirits on and off my whole life and none of them were the same or gave me paranoid based information. There is a really big difference. Most of the spirits I encountered were people I knew who had passed on and they didn't stick around for long. And I knew they were spirits.

Answer 25

I wonder that too but the norm is most people don't experience hallucinations like that so we deem them mentally ill and crazy.  I always thought what if he is normal so to speak and he just can see things in another dimension, but people think he is crazy because only a few have the disorder.

Answer 26

I think it was both. That he was mentally unstable,first and foremost.

Answer 27

No.

Schizophrenia

Nash began to show signs of schizophrenia in 1958. He became paranoid and was admitted into the McLean Hospital, April–May 1959, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and mild depression with low self-esteem. After a problematic stay in Paris and Geneva, Nash returned to Princeton in 1960. He remained in and out of mental hospitals until 1970, being given insulin shock therapy and antipsychotic medications, usually as a result of being committed rather than by his choice. After 1970, by his choice, he never took antipsychotic medication again. According to his biographer Nasar, he recovered gradually with the passage of time. Encouraged by his then-former wife, Alicia, Nash worked in a communitarian setting where his eccentricities were accepted.

In campus legend, Nash became "The Phantom of Fine Hall" (Fine Hall is Princeton's mathematics center), a shadowy figure who would scribble arcane equations on blackboards in the middle of the night. The legend appears in a work of fiction based on Princeton life, The Mind-Body Problem, by Rebecca Goldstein.

Answer 28

He was schizo. Question is, what did he decode if he was hallucinating?

Usually crazy people are highly intelligent. The problem is that they can't handle it which is why they go crazy.

Answer 29

No.  In a related matter . . . mentally ill people who hear voices are actually hearing their own thoughts, but they think it comes from others.

Answer 30

yup