Nope, I truly think it is suffering later in life: Before it took hold, he had some symptoms - but he wasn't suffering.
I watched such a disorder do its stuff to my ex-husband. He always showed signs of it, but neither of us knew. It was more like a slew of personality quirks. Stress would get to him and he developed quite a temper. It got fairly bad before the diagnosis. I thought he had a drug problem (partially true, but you know).
And then one night he was convinced his spit melted concrete. And so on. Finally a diagnosis: A few years later he couldn't work. Sometimes, even while medicated, he had a flimsy grasp on reality, but most of the voices stopped, which helped tremendously.
The suffering after it takes hold can be a beast of suffering, which was so much differnt than before it really 'took hold'. The hardest period was the time between it becoming serious and the diagnosis.
What I mean is it's an affliction that develops in severity over the years, but if you look back it was never not there, it was just in a much milder form.
But it wasn't there, signs existed that it might develop but if things had gone differently he may have never been been afflicted. Nash himself says a combination of stress to do great things and the necessity of thinking in unorthodox ways to do those things is what triggered the illness.
As far as I know, it's not something your born with, it's something your born more likely to develop.
I watched such a disorder do its stuff to my ex-husband. He always showed signs of it, but neither of us knew. It was more like a slew of personality quirks. Stress would get to him and he developed quite a temper. It got fairly bad before the diagnosis. I thought he had a drug problem (partially true, but you know).
And then one night he was convinced his spit melted concrete. And so on. Finally a diagnosis: A few years later he couldn't work. Sometimes, even while medicated, he had a flimsy grasp on reality, but most of the voices stopped, which helped tremendously.
The suffering after it takes hold can be a beast of suffering, which was so much differnt than before it really 'took hold'. The hardest period was the time between it becoming serious and the diagnosis.