Alex is a young man who dedicates his days to mistreating, assaulting, and hurting people with his group of friends for no apparent reason other than pure enjoyment. In one of the attacks, Alex murders a woman and is confined to 14 years in jail.
A noteworthy point that should be mentioned and that draws our attention, is the way in which the State has solved its problems of crime more than 40 years ago. Prevention is a concept that is evolving, new paradigms open the way to new forms of prevention.
The film was set in Great Britain in 1970, and we see how he is sentenced to life deprivation of liberty.
After two years he learns that there is "a treatment that gets you out of prison and makes you never come back." He consults him with the priest, who tells him about the "Ludovico Technique" and that, according to what he understood, it was in the experimentation phase and entailed certain dangers.
The Minister of the Interior attends the penitentiary in search of a prisoner who meets certain characteristics for treatment to be applied. While observing the training of prisoners, he mentions that the prison system does not work and that the most effective is the "scientific remedy" which consists of "killing their criminal reflex." Alex supports the Minister and gets elected.
Said therapy would consist of a behavioral treatment for behavior modification and he would assure Alex of the complete removal of his evil within two weeks. Alex accepts the deal and submits to the "Aversion therapy" (Ludovico treatment) ignoring the cruel procedures to which he would later be subjected. First, Alex is drugged and sitting in a chair in front of a large projection screen. Then, they tie his hands and feet, and place a small device over his eyes to prevent him from closing them.
Finally the procedure begins: While Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (Alex's favorite music) plays in the corners of the room, scenes of violence, destruction and death are projected on the blank screen. The procedure lasts for several hours and is repeated for several days. After a few days, Alex develops a feeling of deep discomfort in the face of images of violence, to the point of wishing his own death.
After the two weeks, the protagonist is introduced to a group of doctors and governmental and ecclesiastical authorities. Said presentation is made by confronting Alex with a simulation where a man hits him and forces him to lick the sole of his shoe and a naked woman tries to seduce him.
Surprisingly, Alex does not react as he would have before the therapy, he cannot return the assault to the man or satisfy his sexual desire with the woman because in the face of such stimuli he only feels nausea and wishes to die.
For the medical team, aversion reactions make the procedure a success. However, a priest expresses his disagreement at the stripping of free will that therapy achieves in Alex. The revulsion that violence and lust produce in Alex is not conscious, they are not chosen; instead, they are physical responses associated with the stimuli that aversion therapy managed to impose as conditioned reflexes.
The Ludovico technique is an artistic copy of the psychological phenomenon known as classical conditioning, process initiated by the Russian psychologist, philosopher and physiologist Iván Pàvlov where he studied this theory based on observation with dogs, which acclimatizes to a high physical and psychological aversion to the controlled stimulus that is presented to him.
Behaviorism is a psychological trend that defends the use of strictly experimental procedures to study observable behavior, behavior, and considers the environment as a set of stimulus-responses. The foundation of this psychological school is awarded to the American psychologist John Broadus Watson.
To develop behaviorism, Watson relied primarily on Pàvlov's research on physiology and on the concept he had created about conditioned reflexes..
According to this theory, which Watson defined as a "natural science", all complex forms of behavior are analyzed as chains of simple or glandular responses that can be observed or measured. He even considers that emotional reactions can be learned in the same way as any other. These postulates generated a large amount of research in both animals and humans.
The behaviorists sought to "control the reactions of man" as well as "anticipate and control human activity." It is worth highlighting those works that were carried out in prisons that led to the development of a series of therapies called "Behavior modification", and those experiences that studied the long and short-term effects of drugs on behavior.
Analyzing the relationship of Alex, the protagonist, with his parents, we can say that this was very particular, since taking into account the time in which this story takes place, we notice that there was a wide generational difference between parents and children, where there was practically no dialogue between them, and where parents were completely ignorant of their children's lives.
In the film, Alex's parents represent an older age than they actually are and the teenager, who is around 15 years old, appears to be much older. Alex has the key to his house so he can come and go as he wants. This independence is accentuated by the fact that Alex has a lock in his room. In this way, he prohibits his parents from entering it. Her room is decorated in a particular way (the image of the woman on the wall, the religious images, she has her own pet -a snake-).
He sets it according to his tastes, without the intervention of his parents and without them being able to access his private world. In this way, the protagonist wants to reaffirm his identity and his emerging autonomy. Alex is absent from school due to alleged headaches and his parents do nothing about it. They believe that their son is behaving in a correct way without being suspicious of his walks, although they know that the boy in the past had violent behaviors and problems that led him to enter correctional schools.
The protagonist of this story is a character who has had family support difficulties, since his parents are people with full-time jobs, reasons for which they neglect their son and this is reflected in the film when his mother She wakes him up to go to school and he says no because he has a headache and she just leaves, he doesn't ask him the reasons, he doesn't care if it's true or not.
Because of this Alex melts into the world of drugs presented as the Korova Milk, since he said that it made him fly and become more violent and increasingly want more, to this is added that he liked the costumes of the time of Bethoveen who likes his music and even made him hallucinate under the effects of "milk". This situation led him to commit several crimes with his friends, always looking for power and money which he did not have in abundance and that was what he wanted..
This story reflects the reality of young people who are dependent on substances, with which they get what they need so much as the support of their parents one of the most frequent reasons for young people to come to this.
It can be seen that Alex has absent parents who do not know how to impose their authority (not to be confused with authoritarianism) on their son, a problematic son in search of the limits of his parents. They do not know how to convey the affection they have for him, because they really must have suffered with the actions of their ultraviolent son. Beyond this, his parents are going to visit him in the hospital after his suicide attempt. There they recognize that they are partly responsible for what happened to him and they tell him that his house will always be his house..
Various statistics show that fatherless adolescents embark on sexual experiences earlier and to a greater extent; are at higher risk of abusing drugs such as alcohol and marijuana; they are more likely to suffer from mental illness and commit suicide; they suffer a higher proportion of school dropouts and criminality (these effects are exacerbated when it comes to children who experienced the divorce of their parents when they were under five years of age); Most of the children with emotional deficiencies on the part of their father suffer sexual and emotional identity problems, such as anxiety and depression; they are less supportive and empathetic and have significantly less intellectual capacity. They are more aggressive, have less self-control and little sense of guilt.
The adolescent goes on to question a large part of the certainties and defenses of latency age, such as the certainty of the omniscience and omnipotence of adults.
Adolescence is a time of search, of trial and error, of advances and setbacks. It is a moment of important change in identity and in relationships with others because it represents the birth of new links and spaces for sociability. Finding yourself again is the difficult task that every teenager is immersed in. It involves suffering, insecurity and fear. Soon you will be looking for some escape that allows you to reduce your inner state of imbalance.
The aggressiveness it is a common mechanism used by adolescents in the search for their identity. This is reflected in the film where Alex is shown, a young teenager whose main interests are rape and ultra-violence. Often the adolescent behaves as if he considers himself invulnerable, as if he will not suffer the consequences of the risks in which he incurs.
This tendency to participate in risky situations is also increased by the adolescent's orientation towards novelty and independence, which leads him to seek new sensations. This is why Alex and his gang of friends steal, beat and rape whoever crosses their path. They have their own methods of having fun and unleashing their tremendous aggressiveness and they achieve this by enjoying themselves through the misfortune of others. This is already observed from the beginning of the film when Alex says he cannot bear to see the "griminess" and drunkenness of an old man. Then (for no apparent reason) they start hitting him, while singing and laughing.
Another time, Alex and his droogs enter a writer's mansion and rape his wife in front of his eyes while singing. Through these acts, they will try to satisfy their sexual appetites since, in adolescence, we enter the genital stage, a stage in which sexual impulses require urgent satisfaction. Oedipal conflicts resurface and are definitively resolved with the choice of the sexual object. The primary task of the adolescent will be the achievement of genital primacy and the final consummation of the process of the non-incestuous search for the sexual object. In turn, adolescence implies the questioning of oedipal identifications. It will precisely try to renew these identifications, which opens a generation gap, a gap that separates the adolescent from his parents in an abysmal way.
It is at this stage when a new relationship with the family is established, which is replaced by the group of friends. For the adolescent it is perhaps more important to achieve recognition in the group of their peers than in the eyes of their parents. The need to feel important, accepted, or independent prompts teens to try to stand out. There is a clear need for participation: uniformity in the language and clothing of adolescents is nothing more than the need to be considered and approved by the group itself. However, the leadership that Alex assumes within the group is not seen with good eyes by his friends, who one night decide to betray him and set a trap for him to be captured by the police..
Generally when children enter adolescence, the organization in the family environment suffers a mismatch, since it constitutes the stage where the deidealization of parental figures occurs. The family crisis that ensues is a normal stage of development, necessary for the affirmation of the adolescent's identity. Despite the lack of idealization, parents occupy a very important place in the lives of adolescents, not only materially but also emotionally, since the adolescent finds himself in a continuous conflict between the desire to be independent from his parents and realizing how dependent he really is.
This is reflected in the movie. After two weeks of cruel treatment, Alex returns home, but finds himself in a very different situation than before his arrest, his parents put his room up for rent. The new tenant is a young man about the same age as Alex.
The protagonist finds a room that is no longer his, that its decoration is different, that no longer represents "his world", "his lair", the place where he found peace listening to Beethoven. Alex's parents "adopt" the young tenant as their son, who takes advantage of the situation and defends his new parents, telling the real son that he had already made them suffer too much and that he would not allow him to do so again. Faced with this, parents do not react, they do not know how to handle the situation and they let their child leave the apartment leaving him adrift. Having nowhere to go, Alex walks the streets alone.
It is at that moment that the protagonist's vulnerability is reflected, without belonging to any social group (he has no “family” and has no friends), he realizes that he does depend on his family. You need a base from which to start. He is nothing without his place in the world.
Contrary to what happens in the film, we can say that there are three basic elements in adults that make the relationship with their children conflictive:
Parents generally consider their children an extension of themselves.
They try to make the adolescent adopt the behavior that they like and if that wish is not fulfilled, the parents feel offended. They are convinced that they are trying to change the young person for their own good but unconsciously they want their child to respond to the ideal that they set..
The son represents a being with multiple possibilities for his future. They see the adolescent as a real possibility to fulfill goals and ideals that they could not achieve.
So too, most adolescents are subject to sufficiently positive reactions from their parents. Parents who must be present, not shirk their responsibility and be able to protect the young person, while respecting their freshness and creativity and not renouncing lightly their own ideals and convictions.
There is a challenge to behavioral psychology, understanding it as a discipline that reduces individuals to mere biological entities that respond to a particular stimulus. Human beings have a conscience; although this is unique, unrepeatable and its study and generalization are impossible. It is on the minds of all men: to overlook its existence is not a scientific advance but an absolute recklessness.
Alex's condition is the consequence of various social and cultural stimuli and the lack of other family members. The absolute freedom that his parents allow him is perhaps one of the worst irresponsibilities. The lack of "rewards and punishments", essential elements in any upbringing, do not seem to be contemplated in the endorsements of their parents. It is paradoxical that the society that provides Alex with ultraviolence is the same one that seeks to seek harmony at the expense of Alex's own conscience and freedom..
Society deforms individuals and then society claims that those who were deformed are to blame for their own deformity. Television, music, war, violence in the streets, social and political intolerance, are elements that any adolescent can contemplate and absorb. There are those to whom these elements are inherent; others are subverted by its influence, whether in thinking or acting. Young people are family, social and cultural constructions. We are convinced that there is, beyond Alex's consciousness, a social and family environment that influenced the personality of the protagonist.
Thus we conclude that no human being can be reduced to being an object of study that can be experienced and observed in the form of behavior. In the same way, we are convinced that no ultimate end justifies the suffering of a human being and less the absolute removal of freedom and conscience, which are the fundamental foundation of the human being. With all this, what is important and appropriate will be specified as a means of solving these behaviors, prevention.
The term prevention according to the dictionary, means to anticipate, precede, prevent with anticipated measures. Within Criminology this is a very important pillar, it is its essence.
It is worth distinguishing the difference between preventing and creating panic, the latter being ineffective since it would only be possible to create censorship on this issue without attacking the root problem, which is precisely what is intended to be achieved through “primary prevention”. With this type of prevention, what is done is promoting health in the community and protecting against the appearance of the disease.
The most effective thing would be to get to exercise policies with interdisciplinary approaches, all this without having to think utopianly.
We believe it pertinent to remember that the cultural context that is represented in the film is still valid today. We find broad parallels between Alex's life and a very recent case in our ultraviolent society: The hitman boy, Edgar Jimenez Lugo called “El ponchis” who is accused of more than 3 homicides and his involvement with cartels, some of which were videotaped where he is found torturing his victims.
Bibliography
BURGESS, A. (1999). The clockwork orange (translation by Aníbal Leal and Ana Quijada). Madrid: The world. Skinner, B. F., & Ardila, R. (1977). About behaviorism. Fontanella.
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