Obsessions and Paranoid Schizophrenics

I recently posted a blog on the movie called A Beautiful Mind. It is a true story about a man named John Nash who was a brilliant mathematician. He suffered his whole life from schizophrenia, which put his life in danger and the lives of his wife and child. Eventually he is able to live a mostly normal life with the disease, and he goes on to win a Nobel Prize in later in his life.

The Harmony of the Spheres, written by Salman Rushdie and published in a book of his short stories called East, West, is about a genius who was also a paranoid schizophrenic, which is similar to John Nash. However, unlike Nash, the only way he was able to find peace was to commit suicide. While the cause of Nash’s sickness wasn’t directly touched on in the movie, in Rushdie’s portrayal of madness, it seems that the main character, Eliot Crane, became mad from an obsession (although similarly John Nash was obsessed with his mathematical theories). Eliot was obsessed with cults. He had even written a book on his study of overt and covert occultist groups, which was called The Harmony of the Spheres. The first time he ever encountered a demon was when he finished writing the book. Yet his friend, the narrator, says that his interest in the "dark arts was more than just scholarly" (pg. 136). It would make sense that someone with such an obsession would begin to see or experience things that aren’t really happening, just as Eliot did. I believe that the mind is very powerful. If something consumes a person, then the mind can easily make them "see" it and make it very real to them.

Another characteristic that both of these characters had in common is that they were both considered geniuses. Geniuses have many ideas and a rationale that the average person can't understand or see the sense in. They have much more complicated thoughts than the average person. In The Harmony of the Spheres, the narrator describes what is going on in Eliots brain. "You never heard such a din as the ruckus in Eliot's head... What human mind could have defended itself against such a Babel, in which Theosophists argued with Confucians, Christian Scientists with Rosicrucians? Here were devotees praising the coming of Lord Maitreya; there, blood sucking wizards hurling curses..." (pg. 142).  I think many geniuses are also considered eccentric or crazy because they act differently than the average person would. At one point Eliot was found "going the wrong way on the motorway, doing ninety, with one of those sleep-mask things over his eyes" (pg. 127). While the book doesn't specify whether this act was a side effect of his illness or not, I would speculate that Eliot saw rationale in this, and was not just doing it to be wreckless.

Eliot believed that people become mad because of a "biochemical imbalance" (pg. 134). It’s an expression that I have heard of and used. If someone seems a little weird, I might say "I think they might be a little chemically imbalanced, if ya know what I mean." I think this rationalization makes perfect sense though. People are given medication to help relieve the symptoms of schizophrenia. If a pill (filled with chemicals) can help, then it seems that the pill would in fact be "balancing" the chemicals in the body which are not balanced in the first place. During Eliot’s sickness (a period of two years) their were periods when the drugs were working, but also they did not work if he did not take them regularly, which was also the case with John Nash.

In order to find the cure for the sickness, you must know and treat the causes. It seems that the medications help, but they do not cure the sickness, and therefore maybe they are not treating the cause, or perhaps they are only treating a portion of the causes. I think the other half of the cause and the cure lies in the obsession. Both Eliot Crane and John Nash had an obsession. Although there are many people who also have obsessions, maybe it does take a certain chemical imbalance to cause a person to become a paranoid schizophrenic. And if this is true, then I’m not sure how one could go about restoring themself to balance and harmony without abandoning their obsession, which is obviously hard to do, hence the meaning of the word obsession. It would be even harder to do if it were your life’s work. The only other option I see is finding something else to live for, otherwise their life will eventually be ruined.