A Clockwork Orange

In the movie A Clockwork Orange, Alex DeLarge is imprisoned for raping and murdering a woman and is sentenced to 14 years in jail. However, Alex wants to try the new experimental treatment that he has heard will release you from prison early and takes about two weeks to preform. The doctors tell Alex that this treatment is in the experimental phase and could cause serious damage, but Alex does not care he just wants to get out of jail. The doctors take him to the treatment facility where he is given an injection and then taken to a viewing room to be strapped into a straight jacket. The doctors clamp his eyelids open so no matter how hard he tries he can not close his eyes. They show him pictures of violent scenes as they play his favorite classical music in the background. As the pictures continue Alex begins to feel very sick and begs for the treatment to stop. Alex has to go through this process every morning and afternoon until he is fully cured from his violent tendencies. After two weeks, every time he wants to do something violent he gets that nauseous feeling and can not preform the task.

The doctors used classical conditioning to rid Alex of his violent tendencies. Classical conditioning by definition is when organisms learn to associate one stimulus with another. In A Clockwork Orange, there were three main stimuli involved, the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned stimulus, and the unconditioned response. The unconditioned stimulus is a stimulus that is produced without any learning involved. In Alex's case, the unconditioned stimulus was the shot of medicine. The conditioned stimulus is a neutral stimulus that will create a conditioned response once it is repeatedly put together with the unconditioned stimulus. The conditioned stimulus in this example was the pictures of violence that the doctors showed him. The unconditioned response is then created by an unconditioned stimulus without prior learning and was the nausea that Alex felt each time he wanted to preform a violent act.