Ludovico technique

This article refers to the psychological conditioning technique from A Clockwork Orange. For information regarding the art and video production firm of the same name, please see Ludovico Technique LLC.

The Ludovico technique is a fictional drug-assisted aversion therapy from the novel and film A Clockwork Orange. It involves the patient being forced to watch violent images for long periods of time, while under the effect of drugs that cause a near death experience. The idea is that if the patient is forced to watch the horribly graphic rapes, assaults and other acts of violence while suffering from the drug effects, the patient will assimilate the sensations and then become incapacitated or very ill either attempting to perform or even just witnessing said acts of violence.

The Ludovico technique is an artistic semblance of the psychological phenomenon known as classical conditioning which is a form of associative learning that was first demonstrated by Ivan Pavlov. The typical procedure for inducing classical conditioning involves presentations of a neutral stimulus along with a stimulus of some significance. The neutral stimulus could be any event that does not result in an overt behavioral response from the organism under investigation. In the story of A Clockwork Orange, when the protagonist, Alex, is made the subject of the Ludovico technique, he is conditioned to associate his illness with violence.

In the process of creating both the novel and film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, original author Anthony Burgess and film director Stanley Kubrick both went to painstaking effort to incorporate a plethora of symbols for the context of the story.

Social background

Much of the film reflects the fears, and logical extrapolations, of the time in which it was made: Massive unemployment, moral decay, and the various liberal and conservative approaches to the resultant crime. The main character Alex, a hedonist, sadist and sociopath, reflects the end result of such a future dystopia. The fictional Ludovico technique plays a crucial role as both a plot device and social commentary.

After his capture and incarceration for murder (the conservative approach to crime) he volunteers for the Ludovico Technique (a technocratic approach to crime) in hopes of early release, not having any idea what the treatment entails. One crucial plot device is that while being forced to watch scenes of violence and cruelty, he is also forced to watch old newsreels of totalitarian regimes in an attempt to cure him of every conceivable social aberration. One such film repeatedly shown was Triumph of the Will. Unfortunately the original scores were also played with these newsreels, many of which were his one socially acceptable vice; his love for the music of Ludwig Van Beethoven. (The coincidence of this is emphasized by the name Burgess chose for the fictional technique: "Ludovico" is an Italian form of "Ludwig".) Thus while being 'cured' of violence and social aberration, he is also forever denied the music of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. It is this 'flaw' in the treatment that allows Alex to eventually undo his treatment, and after surviving an attempt on his life by one of his former victims, the film ends with him being made a political pawn in the crime debate, as he begins to once again imagine doing all the sociopathic things he did before.

Kubrick based the movie on the American edition of the novel, which omitted the last chapter in which Alex outgrows his sociopathy