One of my clients devoted her life to a study of mind. When she was in high school, she fell in love with a very nice boy. His parents were against liaison because she was not of same religion. They dated for 3 years but were forced by family pressure to end relationship. He "lost his mind". The last time my client saw him was a visit to a mental hospital where he had been committed -- labelled incurable. "What is a mind that you can "lose" it?" she thought. Thus began a lifetime journey for her to settle this question to her own satisfaction.

The much acclaimed film, "A Beautiful Mind" has been first of many recent films to take a new look at mystifying territory of "the Mind". The mental disintegration of mathematical genius John Nash is explored with interest and sensitivity.

Nash wrote a 27-page dissertation, "Non-Cooperative Games", in 1950 when he was just 21 years old. Eight years later he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. In 1970 disease went into remission and in 1994 John Nash was honored with Nobel Prize in Economics.

Nash claimed his mental condition was due to living on "ultralogical plane" and breathing "rarefied air" not meant for mere mortals. Nash believed this permitted him to make unique contributions to his field. He was not so sure that being normal was way to go.

I attended a high school in Midwest with over 4,000 students. It was in another era, and our school was divided into sections according to how smart we were. The academic pecking order was no secret.

The "gifted" on one extreme and "educable mentally handicapped" (henceforth, EMH) on other, flanked vast "average" majority which included homecoming queens, cheerleaders, football captions and others equally blessed with normalcy. The three groups were segregated from each other during school day.

Kids from all three learning groups were mixed together in study hall and I noticed that two extreme groups - gifted and EMHers -- seemed to meet somewhere in middle. They were more like each other than either was like normal.

This is a phenomenon of polarity. For example, hot and cold are both degrees of temperature. Dry ice, a temperature extreme, is so cold that it burns. It really seems hot. In this context, saying "when hell freezes over" really makes sense.

Both gifted and EMH groups were fidgety and restless. Both were socially ill at ease and amazingly un-self-conscious for high school. Both groups tended to "read aloud", mumbling words or moving their fingers across a page as they were reading. And, I'm sorry to say, both groups were chosen with equal degrees of victimization to endure teasing of average group in middle.

An astrologer notices that amount of mental energy surging through circuits of gifted mind does not leave much to focus on physical world. As with Nash, these people tend to live in a rarefied atmosphere and don't often "touch down" to mundane world to take care of things like dandruff, acne and body odor.

In case of EMH students, one suspects disrupted mental circuits, dead ends and hot wires, to speak descriptively. The charts of both gifted and educable mentally handicapped are indistinguishable save for focus and grouping of planets so common in charts of gifted (called Stelliums or more correctly Stellia). Without this grouping, they would be as "scattered" mentally or mentally "undone" as EMHers.

Another characteristic of gifted charts is an afflicted Ascendant. What results from this is that many gifted people are unable to make a positive first impression. If you will pardon a play on words, they do not speak well for themselves. Is it any wonder they escape to higher realms? Or is it because they escape to higher realms that they make such a poor first impression? (Fortunately there are plenty of people in this world who can see beyond first impressions.)

The Ascendant describes way you appear upon first meeting, including way you talk and process information from your environment. The genius Albert Einstein may not have talked until he was 3 years old. Winston Churchill, another genius, had a lisp and failed often in school when something didn't capture his interest. According to his official biographer, Churchill was believed to be physically repulsive to his own father. Of course this is entirely subjective and unjustified, if you look at photos of this great man as a baby. But life behind Ascendant of an astrology chart IS very subjective and outer world will confirm to expectations embodied in chart.

No one would argue that world renowned Stephen Hawking is a very compelling example of this phenomenon. Hawking, who suffers from Motor Neurone Disease or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, complications of which have made it impossible for him to speak at all (tracheotomy), is quoted on his website (www.hawking.org.uk) as saying, "One's voice is very important. If you have a slurred voice, people are likely to treat you as mentally deficient."

Often in charts of educable mentally handicapped, afflicted Rising Sign characterizes a physical condition which has led to mental problems or an approach to social situations that reflects an inability to process and respond to social cues such as proper distance, appropriate gestures, chat style, and so forth.

Sometimes mentally deficient individuals simply do not understand or care how their physical body connects with social stratosphere. I once read an article about a retarded couple who had a baby that kept slipping out of carry seat because her well meaning but borderline retarded parents simply could not remember to strap her in. Please remember that I am being descriptive, not critical.

What happened to John Nash? Did bundling pull too tight and break circuits? Was too much mental energy sent through circuits at one time because of tremendous rate of vibration of his brain? Were emotional and psychological territories starved for energy and left to atrophy like a limb with gangrene? Nash's own words are as descriptive and "poetic" as these … rarefied air and ultralogical plane. We don't know what happened. We are all fascinated.

On other end of spectrum, in June 2002 Supreme Court overturned in a 6-3 vote 1989 decision in Penry v. Lynaugh ( 492 US 584), that mental retardation would not prohibit death penalty but it would be considered an extenuating circumstance in crime.