A Beautiful Mind

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1998

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Part 4, Chapters 38-42Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 4: “The Lost Years”

Chapter 38 Summary: “Citoyen du Monde, Paris and Geneva, 1959-60”

When Nash and Alicia arrive in Paris, Nash is filled with “a heightened sense of purpose” and “a desire to cut himself off from all vestiges of his former social self” (270). Alicia tries to convince him to “give up on his ‘silly’ notions” (270) but without success. After a week in Paris, Nash travels to Luxembourg, enters the American embassy and “announce[s] that he no longer wishe[s] to be an American citizen” (271).

American citizens have the right to give up their citizenship, something that is usually used “to resolve cases of dual citizenship” (271). However, Nash intends to use this right to distance himself from America and become “a world citizen” (272) instead. An embassy official manages to dissuade him from this action.

Returning to Paris, Nash is undaunted and soon comes up with a new plan to travel to Switzerland and “obtain official refugee status” (273). Alicia travels with him but leaves almost immediately to stay with a friend in Italy. Nash spends five months in Switzerland writing letters and filling in applications, his pursuit of refugee status reflecting “an expanding feeling of alienation, a sense of persecution, and fear of incarceration” (273).

Nash struggles to make progress with his plans and is threatened with deportation by the Swiss authorities. To make matters worse, he receives a letter from his sister informing him that their mother has had “a nervous breakdown and spent two weeks in hospital” (276). Eventually, “in a fit of desperation, Nash destroy[s] or [throws] away his passport” (276).

Nash is arrested twice by the Swiss police but still refuses to return to America. When Alicia returns from Italy, she agrees to take him to Paris instead. Her mother joins them with their child there but departs sometime after Christmas leaving her grandson, now christened John Charles Martin Nash by his grandparents, with Alicia.

Amazingly, Nash, “alone and without a passport” (281), manages to travel to East Germany where he applies for asylum. He is eventually ejected from the country and returned to Paris where he spends his time writing nonsensical letters “filled with numerology,” “newspaper clippings,” and “little patterns” (281).

Eventually, Nash is escorted to the airport by French police and flown back to America using money requested from his mother by the State Department. His hair “grown long” and sporting “a full beard” (282), Nash is angry and unreasonable, claiming that he was returned to America “on a ship and in chains, like a slave” (282).

Chapter 39 Summary: “Absolute Zero, Princeton, 1960”

Back in America, Nash returns to Princeton for a short while and, after hearing that his sister has had a baby, visits her in the hospital. She is “frightened by his appearance” and does not tell him the baby’s date of birth in case he “put[s] some meaning in it” (282).

After leaving John Charles with Alicia’s mother again, Nash and Alicia move to Princeton. Initially, this helps Nash’s condition and his friends manage to secure him a temporary consultancy, despite reluctance from the university administration which believes that “the appointment might be based on human kindness, rather than on realistic, technical needs” (285).

Soon, however, Nash begins planning to return to France. His behavior becomes strange again and his appearance even stranger. Long haired and bushy bearded, he is often barefoot, has “a fixed expression, a dead gaze,” and spends much of his time wearing “a smocklike Russian peasant garment” (285).

Nash begins making “cryptic little remarks” (285) and speaks again of “world peace and world government” (286). He also begins writing letters again and making phone calls using false names. The content of these attempts to communicate is “all nonsense. Numerology. Dates. World affairs” (286).

Eventually, Alicia concludes that Nash, who now often refers to himself as Johann von Nassau, needs to be committed again. Two days before the police arrive for him, a terrified Nash announces, “Johann von Nassau has been a bad boy […] They’re going to come and get me now” (287).

Chapter 40 Summary: “Tower of Silence, Trenton State Hospital, 1961”

His family seemingly unable to afford to place him in a private hospital, Nash is taken to Trenton State Hospital, an under-staffed and over-crowded public institution. Here, he is made to “occupy a room shared by thirty or forty others, [is] forced to wear clothes that are not [his] own, to have no place, not even a locker, for [his] things” (290).

For Nash, who fears regimentation and routine and craves privacy and autonomy, this is as deeply upsetting as the military service he has long feared. Many people resent the idea that “a genius like Nash [is] incarcerated in a state hospital” (291) but he will remain there six months.

While at the hospital, Nash undergoes “insulin coma therapy” (291) five days a week, a procedure in which insulin injections are used to drop the patient’s blood sugar so low that they fall into a coma. The procedure is notoriously unpleasant and Nash will later describe it as “torture” (292).

After six weeks, the treatment is considered to have worked and Nash is moved to “the so-called rehab or parole ward” (294). He is well enough to begin working on an academic paper and is allowed out on temporary visits. Later in the summer, he is discharged.

Chapter 41 Summary: “An Interlude of Enforced Rationality, July 1961-April 1963”

Although Nash’s recovery is seen as a positive result by those around him, Nash himself feels “a sense of diminution and loss” now that he no longer has access to what he feels were “cosmic, even divine, insights” (295).

Again, Nash is reliant on the kindness of his friends and colleagues who get him a modest research appointment at the IAS. He and Alicia are living together again “but not especially happily” (296), the stresses of the last few years having taken their toll on the relationship. Making things more difficult, Alicia’s mother and unwell father are also living with them.

Despite this, for the first time in almost three years, Nash is capable of conducting research again, finishing the paper he had begun at Trenton State Hospital. However, he talks less “afraid he [will] say something strange and humiliate himself” (297).

Nash’s mental health begins to decline again. He generally dresses in “baggy, rumpled clothes” (298-299) and is sometimes still “odd, unpredictable, nonsensical” (299). He begins learning French and plans, again, to return to France. He also starts writing postcards “scribbled with math and numerology” (299) in colored inks.

Nash returns to Europe and stays in London for a short time where he begins writing letters again, “some on toilet paper, in green ink, in French” (300). He moves to Paris and gives a surprisingly coherent paper at a conference. His behavior is still strange and alienating, however.

When he returns to Princeton, Alicia allows him to move back in. However, when Nash continues writing letters and making phone calls and once again becomes obsessed with asylum, even sending a “request to St. Paul’s in Princeton for sanctuary” (302), Alicia reluctantly begins divorce proceedings.

Although a number of colleagues and fellow mathematicians set up a fund to help pay for medical fees, Nash refuses to voluntarily undergo treatment. Once again, he is committed involuntarily, this time to a nearby private clinic.

Chapter 42 Summary: “‘The “Blowing Up’ Problem, Princeton and Carrier Clinic, 1963-65”

Nash is taken to the Carrier Clinic, a private institution that is more focused on pharmaceutical and electroshock treatments than on the “talking cure” (305) favored by many other clinics. It is far more comfortable and far less overcrowded than Trenton State and the staff is respectful and accommodating, calling him “Dr. Nash” (307) and accepting his vegetarian diet.

Alicia, still concerned with preserving Nash’s mind and memory, refuses to allow Nash to receive electroshock treatment. Nash responds well to other treatment but the decision is made to keep him at the clinic for several months to reduce the risk of him relapsing. After several months he is released, but Alicia insists he live apart from her and their son, now known as Johnny.

Nash begins working again and his colleagues are impressed with the coherence and insight of his ideas and even arrange for him to begin teaching again. He complains of “feeling lonely” (309) and is sad that Alicia is resistant to the idea of re-marrying, but otherwise, life seems relatively stable and positive.

However, Nash is “nowhere near as well as his behavior suggest[s]” (310). Having said that he will be attending a conference America, he once again returns to Europe, believing himself to be a “great but secret religious figure” (311).

Eventually, Nash gives up on whatever plan he had conceived of and travels back to America. He is returned to Carrier where he stays until midsummer. When he is finally released, seemingly recovered again, he takes a job in Boston, colleagues and psychiatrists believing that returning to academia may help maintain his sanity.

Chapters 38-42 Analysis

When Nash arrives in Europe, it is obvious that he is not better. His delusions about world government and his need to escape America are as severe as ever; this appears to be why he wants to be in Europe, a place where, he believes, he can renounce his citizenship and claim asylum.

As before, Nash’s thinking is often simply a more extreme version of his earlier thought patterns. His fear of the draft and of the responsibilities he holds in America are expressed by his need to give up his place as an American citizen.

Similarly, his isolation and difficulty communicating and connecting with others, which had once been the product of his eccentricity, now peaks with his total inability to convey to others the conspiracies, secrets, and meanings that make perfect sense to him. Nash’s letter writing, with its cryptic mixture of “numerology,” “newspaper clippings,” and “little patterns” (281), is an exaggerated form of his obsession with codes and reason, but also reflects this same inability to communicate and his near total isolation from others.

All of this leaves Nash with a “feeling of alienation, a sense of persecution, and fear of incarceration” (273) like never before, his “lifelong quest for meaning, control, and recognition […] now reduced to a caricature” (274).

These experiences continue on Nash’s return to America. His obsession with codes and conspiracies continues and his desperate attempts to communicate his perception of events to others through letters and phone calls are received as “all nonsense” (286), leaving him more and more isolated and paranoid. Again, Nasar draws on the motif of Nash’s bizarre physical appearance—his long hair and full beard, and his bare feet and “smock-like Russian peasant garment” (285)—to highlight his decline and his alienation from “normal” society.

Nash’s sense of paranoid persecution increases dramatically when he is taken to an over-crowded state hospital for treatment. Forced to share space with a large number of other patients and having his beloved autonomy and freedom replaced with the routine and regulations he despises, Nash certainly resents being sectioned and the harsh insulin treatments he receives. Nevertheless, it does seem to be more effective in managing his illness and he is eventually discharged again.

At first, Nash seems a little better, moving in with Alicia and beginning work again. However, this does not last long and he is soon writing nonsensical letters and returns to Europe. His physical appearance is unusual and his behavior becomes unpredictable and unintelligible. Despite his ongoing attempts to secure asylum or even “sanctuary” (302) in a church, he is involuntarily committed again.

After he shows improvement, Nash is released from the clinic but is returned after he takes another trip to Europe, this time because of a delusion that he is a “great but secret religious figure” (311). After another period of treatment, he is released once more, this time to Boston where he has an academic position that will, it is hoped, help him continue to improve.