A Mechanically Responsive Person

Summary: The movie A Clockwork Orange is the futuristic story of Alex, the leader of a gang, and what happens to him both before and after he gets arrested. When he is in jail, scientists and psychologists use classical conditioning to “correct” his criminal ways. To do this they give him a drug that makes him sick and then show him clips of violence and rape in the hopes that his brain will make the association, and therefore will get sick whenever he is around violence.

Definition:

Classical Conditioning: A process of behavior modification by which a subject comes to respond in a desired manner to a previously neutral stimulus that has been repeatedly presented along with an unconditioned stimulus that elicits the desired response.

AKA: if you make somebody respond to something in a way that they normally wouldn't by combining it with something that does make them respond that way.

Example: if you play music during a scary movie that makes somebody nervous, they will feel nervous when they hear that music even if they aren't watching the movie.

If you are still confused:

In the movie:

Unconditioned Stimulus : the violent thoughts and images

Unconditioned Response(how Alex responds to violence normally): the violent acts

Conditioned Stimulus : the violent thoughts and images

Conditioned Stimulus (how Alex responds after treatment): feeling sick

Reaction: The thing that I found most interesting about this movie was the way that it showed how the classical conditioning affected the rest of his life. While in prison, Alex volunteers for the “treatment” not because he wants to change, but because he wants to get out of jail. Therefore, he still has violent, sexual, and crude thoughts. During the classical conditioning, his brain is trained to associate these thoughts with the violent sickness that he felt while watching the violent film. This so called “treatment” did not actually get rid of Alex’s violent thoughts, and therefore he wasn’t actually treated. All that this did, was make him violently ill every time he had these thoughts or was around violence. As an added side effect, the psychologists made him have a similar aversion to Bethoven's 9th, which was previously Alex's favorite music. Another problem with this process is how easy it is for the scientists and psychologists to simply play with their subjects brain. There was no need for them to condition him against this music.

The second half of the movie focused on his life after this conditioning. Alex was not able to defend himself against violence because he was too sick. He wasn’t even able to stop his old gang buddies from nearly drowning him. Eventually, the sick, horrible feeling led Alex to attempt suicide because all he wanted to do was make the feeling stop. This effect of the conditioning makes it obvious that this is not a natural process. Alex as a person was not changed at all. He did not stop having violent thoughts. All the scientists did was make these thoughts cause him to be suicidal. According to Burgess, the writer of the book, a clockwork orange is a "mechanically responsive person" which is exactly what Alex was towards the end of the movie, and is exactly what classical conditioning does to somebody.