A Beautiful Mind: Chapter 36 Summary & Analysis

On the day that Nash is hospitalized for the first time, he goes on a walk with Paul Cohen, who is disturbed by Nash’s rambling speech and paranoia. Nash is hospitalized involuntarily, as MIT’s psychiatrists have determined that Nash is a danger to himself and others. Police officers arrive at Nash’s home and take him to the hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts. McLean Hospital has a reputation as a “sanitorium” where “high-strung poets, professors, and graduate students” are often committed. Nash is transferred to Bowditch Hall, a locked facility for men, where he is joined by the famous poet Robert Lowell, who suffers from manic depression. Lowell and Nash spend a fair amount of time together in the hospital: Lowell often delivers long, rambling monologues in Nash’s room. Bowditch is an “oddly genteel” environment, populated by well-behaved, though seriously ill, men: Nash, though, feels like a prisoner, and he threatens to sue Alicia for divorce.

For two or three weeks, Nash is “watched, studied, and analyzed” by psychiatrists, who quickly realize that Nash is suffering from schizophrenia, evidenced by the “bizarre and elaborate character” of his delusional beliefs. Within a few weeks of medication and treatment, Nash’s acute psychosis has faded, and he behaves quietly and politely as a patient; still, the residents assigned to his case believe that though his symptoms seem to have “disappeared,” it is likely that he is only concealing them in order to be released early. Nash hires a lawyer to petition for his release from the hospital. Though his residents continue to argue that Nash is not yet recovered, Alicia decides that Nash can come home. One week after the birth of their son, on May 28, Nash leaves the hospital after 50 days there.