Paranoid Schizophrenia Suffered by the main character, Nathaniel Antony Ayers, in Steve Lopez Novel’s The Soloist: A Psychological approach

ABSTRACT

Basically, human beings have many problems in their life, including some problems that related with human psychology. Sometimes human beings show their problems with some indications such as mental disorder. In psychology, mental disorder is called schizophrenia. This disease is often accompanied by symptoms such as disorganize speech, delusions, hallucinations, and also thought disorder that is not controlled. Typically, there are four types of schizophrenia, that are; paranoid, catatonic, hebephrenic, and residual type. In this research, The Soloist novel tells about the main character named Nathaniel Anthony Ayers who has paranoid schizophrenia disorder. He always suspicious to another people until he feels that another people will hurt him.

This research is done in order to know; the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia disorder suffered by the main character, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, in Steve Lopez Novel‟s The Soloist, and the causes of paranoid schizophrenia disorder suffered by the main character, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers in Steve Lopez Novel‟s The Soloist. To answer those research problems, the researcher applies Eugene Bleuler about schizophrenia. Through Steve Lopez‟s The Soloist, the researcher would like to explore the novel main character, Nathaniel, in accordance with the research problems, of course.

There are three symptoms of schizophrenia disorder. In a big classification, there are positive, negative, and disorganize symptoms. But the result of the research shows that Nathaniel has paranoid schizophrenia with positive symptoms includes; disorganize speech, delusion, hallucination, confusion, and thought disorder. Meanwhile the causes of paranoid schizophrenia suffered by the main character are; drug, family environment, structural brain abnormalities, homelessness, and risk of smoking. For the whole symptoms and the causes of schizophrenia, the main character cannot be cured because no spirits and motivations to be made well. Nathaniel thinks that his conditions are normal.

From this research, we can learn something that somebody can prevent schizophrenia disorder by knowing the symptoms of schizophrenia itself. When we face the schizophrenic patient, another people can do the right way which do not damage the patient.