Analysis of the film “A Beautiful Mind” in the context of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Abstract

A Beautiful Mind is a biographical drama about the life of Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash. The film begins with Nash demonstrating his mathematical genius at Princeton University at a young age. However, over time, he begins to show signs of paranoid schizophrenia and has difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy. Nash struggles to maintain both his career and family life while living in a world full of imaginary characters and conspiracies. With the support of his wife Alicia, he goes through a difficult treatment process and eventually learns to live with his illness and achieves great success in the world of mathematics. The film addresses perseverance, love, and the complexity of the human mind. This study aims to examine the film “A Beautiful Mind” in the context of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), a postmodern therapy school that comes from the cognitive-behavioral tradition. Psychological flexibility, one of the basic concepts of ACT, basically includes the ability of individuals to cope with difficult thoughts and emotions, to be open to these experiences, and to take actions based on their values. Psychological rigidity is the opposite concept to psychological flexibility. Scenes and expressions that can be associated with these concepts were examined in the film. In this study, the document analysis technique, one of the qualitative research methods, was used. As a result, it is thought that this film, which includes examples of concepts such as living in the present moment and living in harmony with values, can contribute to the psychological counseling process within the scope of the ACT approach.