John and Alicia Nash: A Beautiful Love Story.

Abstract

John Nash and his wife Alicia died unexpectedly in an auto accident on May 23, 2015. They were 86 and 82. While John was famous formany things, includinghis 1994NobelPrize in economics and his ability to slowly pull out of the cognitive fog of schizophrenia, to me they are best remembered together as one of the great love stories of all time. Alicia deserves fame and remembrance for her beautiful mind as well. Without her, there very likely would have been no recovery and no Nobel Prize. John obtained his Ph.D. inmathematics fromPrinceton in 1950and joined the facultyatMIT in 1951. For a timehehad an affairwithanurse, EleanorStier, and together theyhada child, John Stier, although they never married. Instead he became captivatedbyabeautiful andgiftedyoungwomanwhowasone of his graduate students, Alicia de Larde, who had recently graduated from MIT with a degree in physics. They were married in 1957. She soon became pregnant and gave birth to a son, who was also named John, and who would also obtain a Ph.D. in mathematics and develop schizophrenia. Although he had always been somewhat eccentric, during thepregnancyJohnbegantoshowsignsof full-blownparanoia and cognitive disorganization. Alicia and his friends had to make a difficult decision to have him involuntarily hospitalized atMcLeanHospital in 1959.Hewas treated for several months, and after his dischargehewent toEuropewith aplan to renounce his U.S. citizenship and avoid future commitments. Alicia retrieved him and sent him back to the United States. She and his sister had him admitted to hospitals in New Jersey, where he was treated with insulin coma and psychotropic medications. His illness continued after discharge as he led a confused and peripatetic life both in the United States and abroad. Although worn down by her concerns over his welfare and that of their son, Alicia did her best to cope with his illness and to help him. They were divorced in the early 1960s, but she took him back into her home in Princeton in 1970, and they continued to live there with their son Johnny until their recent death. They formally declared their commitment to one another by remarrying in 2001. By 1994 he had recovered enough to pass inspection by theNobel Committee, which did notwish to cast dishonor on thePrize by choosing a recipientwhohadbeen psychotic and might manifest inappropriate behavior during the awards ceremony.Fortunatelyallwentwell, andJohnandAlicia’s life began anewphase. They received somemuch-neededmoney fromthePrize, andJohn’s intellectualgreatnessreceivedformal recognition of the highest type. I first met John in print by reading Sylvia Nasar’s biography of him, A Beautiful Mind (1), in 1998. As a person who had been interested in a possible relationship between schizophrenia and creativity, I found it fascinating. Shortly thereafter Iwas invited to join himas one of two introductory plenary speakers in the evening opening ceremony of a Cold SpringHarborLaboratory(CSHL)conferenceonschizophrenia. Although Iwouldhave to give that talkwith a jet-laggedbrain that had just returned from Europe that very day, I would never havemissed the opportunity tomeet him and talk with him. At that time the “digs” forCSHLconference speakerswere quite simple—single rooms without private baths, no phones in the rooms, single uncomfortable beds, and a very small “common area” with a pay telephone. I ran into John in the common room and chatted with him a bit. I also helped him call Alicia using the pay telephone. Althoughhewas said tohave “recovered,” no psychiatrist familiar with schizophrenia could fail to miss his residual symptoms. He had facial tics and grimaces. He would laugh inappropriately. His talk that evening was to a fairly broad audience—a mixture of psychiatrists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and molecular scientists. He talked about what it is like to suffer from schizophrenia, the nature of his own recovery, and the need for more research and greater public understanding. He received rousing applause—farmore thanI received formyacademicdiscussion of the neural mechanisms of the characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia. Deservedly so. The nextmorning John sauntered into the breakfast room and sat down next to me, but he was at a loss as to what he should do next. He, a Nobel laureate in economics, had been living in poverty for nearly three decades. Apparently he had never seen a breakfast buffet.He hadno idea that cereal came in individual boxes and that he was supposed to pick one up and take it to his seat. Nor once he had his box could he figure out how to open it or putmilk on it. I walked him through the process, enjoying the fact that I was able to use my skills in psychosocial rehabilitation. His lack of social skills was interesting but not surprising once I thought about it. Knowing him more and more over the upcoming years, I realized that his psychosocial impairments were not illness symptoms but insteadaconsequenceof living ineconomicdeprivation for so long. These kinds of impairments in social skills fell away as The relationship between creativity and mental illness is not simple.