10 - 16 January 2002
Issue No.568
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 10 - 16 January 2002 Issue No.568 |
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Limelight
Inside beautiful minds
Of all the daring and dangerous voyages man has embarked upon since his creation, none has been more mysterious, more mystical, or more captivating than his perilous journey into the dark and dim complex network of intricate, blackened tunnels and obscure narrow corridors of his own mind. Though the journey is hundreds of years old, it has only just begun. Psychology may not have developed into a science until the late 1800s but its origins are often traced to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who was chiefly interested in what the human mind could accomplish. During the Middle Ages behaviour was studied from a religious rather than a scientific viewpoint. Several philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries made contributions to the development of psychology. French philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650) believed people were born with the ability to reason: "I think, therefore I am". By the late 1800s and early 1900s, psychoanalysis was founded by Austrian physician Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who believed repressed feelings cause personality disturbances, which in turn lead to self-destruction. While the science of psychology with its many advances has made great progress with effective results, it has still many more questions than it has answers.
Asked how many seconds a man had lived who was 70 years, 17 days and 12 hours old, Thomas Fuller's correct answer came in 90 seconds - 2,210,500,800 including adjustments for 17 leap years. His case was reported by Dr. Benjamin Rush in 1789. It was one of the earliest reports on "savant syndrome". 100 years later in 1887, Dr. J. Langdon Down (of 'Down' syndrome) coined the term "idiot-savant". 'Idiot' was then an accepted scientific term for one with an IQ below 70. Dr. Down combined that with "savant" (French for 'knowledgeable') to form "idiot-savant". Today however, the condition is known simply as "savant syndrome". The IQ of all savants never exceeds 40, well below the accepted level for idiots. Psychology, with all its meteoric rise and dazzling advances has provided few answers and no cure for this mysterious phenomenon. Savant syndrome may be congenital, or acquired, following brain injury. Autism, another mental disorder often associated with the savant syndrome, is well known to scientists who have provided effective therapeutic treatments.
Fascination with 20th century psychology has provided the film industry a unique and seductive invitation to explore the labyrinths of the human mind, with all its mist and maze, its perplexities and ambiguities. Translating the unknown and invisible into the known and visible became the favourite exercise for the budding film industry. A grateful public could hardly resist creeping and crawling on secret tours through sick, thwarted, distorted or superior minds. After saturating the screen with serial killers, amnesia victims, and multiple personalities, it concentrated on the relatively new syndrome during the last decade - the autistic savant. The juxtaposition of the severely handicapped individual, possessing exceptional mental abilities, became cinema's favourite vehicle. The curious public was mesmerized by all that is contrariwise to nature and film became the mirror to society's engagement with its abnormalities.
Rain Man was the first in a series of analytical visual reviews of the retarded genius, or the autistic savant. Who can forget Dustin Hoffman's Oscar- winning performance as the mentally retarded victim with a prodigious ability with figures! The character was based on a real case of autistic twins whose calendar-calculating span of memory extended back 40,000 years. Dr. Darold Treffert who served as consultant on Rain Man has seen a surging interest by both scientist and layman since the film. His highly regarded book Extraordinary People: Understanding the Savant Syndrome has been re-issued with an update on references and profiles of Savant syndrome patients.
Russell Crowe
How do we explain a blind boy with a 40-IQ who at age 4, plays Mozart on the piano and can repeat a complete conversation or discourse in any language without skipping one syllable? The only plausible explanation that scientists have been able to come up with, is that a diseased left hemisphere of the brain leads to a compensatory dominance of the right hemisphere by migration of its neurons. Such an event, occurring after a brain injury, was depicted in Phenomenon (1998) with John Travolta - a simple car mechanic who gets struck by lightning and wakes up possessing unusual mathematical and linguistic skills. He soon discovers he has a massive tumour of the right side of his brain, causing the left side to compensate.
Two-time Oscar winner, the brilliant Jodie Foster, chose for her directorial debut Little Man Tate (1991), where she played a single mom raising a child genius. In Nell, (1994) she portrays an extremely childlike woman living in the wild, and in Contact (1997), she was the highly perceptive scientist who communicates with beings in outer space. Geoffrey Rush won an Oscar for his portrayal of the musical genius, contemporary Australian concert pianist, David Helfgott in Shine (1996). The emotionally disturbed prodigy disappears from the concert scene after a mental and emotional breakdown. Forest Gump (1994) won Tom Hanks his second Oscar with his touching portrayal of the feeble-minded oaf, who sails along life like a feather in the wind with not enough brains to harm anyone. Honesty, niceness and a 'box of chocolates' are his only worldly skills in this life.
Good Will Hunting (1997) won its young authors, Matt Damon and Ben Afleck an Oscar for their screenplay, about a 20 year old janitor who baffles Nobel Prize winners at MIT, by rapidly solving mathematical problems that frustrate them.
Oscar loves the 'rara avis', and is sure to smile once again on Hollywood's newest mystery tour of psychological exploration. A Beautiful Mind is based on Sylvia Nasar's 1998 best-selling biography of mathematical genius, John Forbes Nash. Handsome, arrogant, aloof, highly eccentric, visionary of the thinking machine, Nash is the author of the economic 'game' theory: "I think, that you think that I think". This theory of rational conflict and cooperation was to become one of the most influential ideas of the 20th century, transforming the young science of Economics, in the same way Mendel's ideas of genetic transmission, and Darwin's model of natural selection reshaped biology in their day. Men of scientific genius, however eccentric, rarely become insane, Nash became the exception. Underneath the brilliant surface of his idyllic life, he was all chaos and contradiction, which buckled and coiled and eventually welled up, spilled over, and swept away the fragile exterior of his perfectly constructed life. He succumbed to schizophrenia and lived in a slumber for long years until his spontaneous remarkable discovery, which was as baffling and as unusual as was his sickness, his genius, and all else about him. Scientists call him "the walking miracle". October 1994, his friend and old classmate Harold Kuhn took him for a walk on the pleasant familiar grounds of Princeton University. They sat silently on a bench enjoying the perfect setting of an Autumn afternoon. His friend spoke softly: "John: tomorrow, a man shall call you from Stockholm...he shall tell you, John, that you have won a Nobel Prize".
A Beautiful Mind is directed by Ron Howard (Apollo 13, Splash) and Nash is portrayed by last year’s winning Gladiator, the talented New Zealander, Russell Crowe. Once again we shall embark on a visual journey through the unfathomable, mystery-land of psychology, to view the beauty and dignity, the force and fragility, of the intricate dark corners, of twists and turns, of the most perfect piece of art and engineering - the human mind.
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