"Our subject is, you see, impelled towards the good by, paradoxically, being impelled towards evil. The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress. To counter these the subject has to switch to a diametrically opposed attitude. Any questions?"-Dr. Brodsky in "Clockwork Orange"
In Clockwork Orange, the main character Alex is sent to jail for murder but offered an experimental treatment that will turn "bad into good" through a new "technique" of extreme Classical Conditioning. Classical Conditioning is a type of learning where an organism learns to associate one stimulus with another, such as a dog seeing a leash excites them for a walk. Before watching films showing horrible images of violence Alex is given a shot that will make him experience nausea. The shot is theUnconditioned Stimulus which in turn produces nausea, which is the Unconditioned Response. After watching many hours of violence while feeling nauseous Alex learns to associate nausea with the Neutral Stimulus, violence, thus the conditioning has stopped him from committing violent acts because he will experience intense nausea if he ever tries to do anything violent or sees anything of that nature.
This is a helpful diagram for a better understanding of Classical Conditioning:
(A short video Clip of the Conditioning!)
The treatment for Alex works, but eventually a processes called Extinction occurs, a particular behavior is weakened by the consequence of not experiencing a positive condition, or in his case stopping a negative condition. I believe that because of extinction and that fact that his goodness is involuntary, that is why Alex feels the need to kill again at the end of Clockwork Orange.
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