Anthony Burgess definitely has a fertile mind, he gives an admirable credibility to the Ludovico technique. For those who
haven't read 'The Clockwork Orange', this is a novel with a
psychological base. Using classical
conditioning, Alex, an extremely violent prisoner is made as pristine as a priest. What the experimenters do is, they give him an intense nausea-inducing drug and then show him graphically violent movies. This is done everyday for two weeks until Alex has been conditioned to relate extreme nausea with violence. After that, he is unable to commit any crime as the thought induces crippling nausea. What I don't understand is, why has this ingenious idea been relegated to the pages of fiction and never been attempted to turn into reality? What a day it would be, when all wife-beaters, all murderers, drug traffickers, vandalists are made remarkably docile in just two weeks! Many scientists have admitted that they had taken a leaf out of a Jules Verne book. Why can't the same logic be applied here? We use classical conditioning liberally in curing psychological ailments, in advertising and parents with children. I think we should take it a step further and employ it in our prisons as well. Why just prisons, perhaps this can be a useful weapon in curing insanity as well. The issue of crime and criminals is very close to my heart. If the world could become free of crime, we would be almost on the end of the road to Utopia, an ideal world. Just think about it.