A Psychological Analysis of Alex in A Clockwork Orange
In A Clockwork Orange, Alex is portrayed as two different people living
within the same body. As a mischievous child raping the world, he as seen as
filth. His actions and blatant disrespect towards society are categorized under
that of the common street bum. However, when he is away from his evening attire,
he is that of suave. His clothing, his words, his overall attitude. The
distinction between the two is triggered by the gentle sounds of Ludwig Van
Beethoven.
The psychology of Alex would be that of a serial killer. He is a classic
example of Darwin's, Skinner's, Freud's, Erikson's, and Adler's major theories.
Alex is not truly close to any other person that he comes in contact
with in the film. He is using his parents for a place to live, and they show no
emotion towards him, good or bad. His love for his gang is not that of a
male/male platonic relationship that is common in brotherhoods. It is that of a
marriage of like interests, when the parties involved loathe each other
personally. Society is against him for all his mortal sins. The only living
creature that he shows love for is his snake.
Darwin's theory of man having the same thought process's of animals
holds an interesting bearing upon Alex. Alex's love is for his snake. Generally
love is defined by an understanding, or a closeness between two items. The snake
is represented by many things in the natural world today.
Freud's analyzation for the male closeness to the snake is that the person
involved is questioning his sexuality, or his love towards the female gender.
Alex keeps coming back to his snake after his nights on the town, and his first
concern with life after he is paroled is his dear snake. This, combined with the
fact that keeps his snake in a chest under his bed ( the most recognized sexual
item in an average household), show's his inadequacies with his sexual
performance and his penis. He feels that by keeping in contact with his snake,
he will be more of a man then he already is, thus making him more noticeable and
attractive towards the opposite sex. Therefore, Alex doesn't view his snake as
an equal, but as a greater being capable of becoming a close friend and a
security blanket.
The snake is also used in many different cultures to represent the evil and
hate that man kind dwells on. When something evil happens, culture blames all of
it's fears upon the snake, the idol of fear. The love that Alex feels for his
snake could fall under the love of understanding. With this love, Alex feels
that he can relate to his snake, and to what society views the snake as. Alex
finds the snake to represent sin and the hate that spawned the world as we know
it today. In Genesis, the serpent convinced eve to disobey her god and to eat an
apple from the tree of life, thus causing man to not be eternal, and for woman's
childbirth to be complex and painful. In Christianity, the snake is the
originator of sin. Alex feels that he is the modern bringer of sin.
Alex often finds himself in many situations where he is surrounded with
scenes of graphic sex or some sort of phallic reference. After a night of Ultra-
Violence, Alex and his droogs find themselves relaxing at the Karova Milk Bar
drinking Milk Plus, Milk Plus Dreminol, and Milk Plus Synthemesc. The bar is
adorned with images and sculptures of naked women in various positions of sexual
encounters, all of which with exaggerated colors and lengths of fluffy hair.
This corresponds with Harlow's experiments with monkey babies finding comfort in
soft items in times of distress. Alex finds comfort in the fluffy hair and
softness of the environment of the bar. When he has committed an act of
distressing nature, be it violence or everyday normal occurrences, he retreats
to Karova to bring him a feeling of warmth, satisfaction, and justification of
his previous deeds.
This form of relaxation is common from children of broken homes. Freud
believes that the self-image within a man is shaped in the first 5 years of life.
With the response that Alex's parents give to him in his home-life, it is
obvious that they did not offer much love to the growing child. By Freud's
belief, if the child does not receive the proper love from a mother that it
should, it will find other means to replace the comfort that a mother provides.
Alex's comfort was the violence and the pleasure brought from a night completed.
There is no reference in the movie about Alex's parents being his natural
born parents, or if one of them died and remarried. My beliefs are that Alex's
natural born mother was beaten and eventually left his father. Alex was in the
middle of this action, and like Bandura's findings, the child imitates the
action that he views and takes it as natural, thus using it in everyday life.
Alex's aggression upon society are truly the natural urges and feelings that he
experiences, thus making him normal, being unaware of the wrongs that his
violence induces.
In a Freudian aspect, this could explain a vast majority of his aggression
that he displays. His actions interpret his hatred towards his father for being
the reason he lacks a parental security blanket. As quoted in one of the first
few scenes: "...and in the mess of wobbly chaos the drunken old malchek had found
himself lying in, he had managed to be able to push out an ugly lyric or two.
Now, the one thing that I truly hate in the world is a drunken old malchek
singing out the songs of his father with an occasional "blurp,blurp" in
between.", this shows his loath for
1) Disrespect for music.
2) Drunks, and
3) Men in his fathers image.
The music was his salvation, for it could snap him in and out of his
dementia. The music was used in a pseudo-Pavlov experiment to eliminate Alex's
love for violence. In the experiment, Alex ingested a serum that would induce a
deathlike paralysis. While the serum was taking effect, he was bombarded with
sights of violence and the sweet sounds of Ludwig Van Beethoven, both leaving an
impression in his psyche, relating the sickness to the sights and sounds that he
was subjected to.
In Pavlov's experiments, his major goal was to prove that he could train a
subject to give a conditioned response with no reinforcement. This was
accomplished by training a dog to salivate when he heard a bell ring. The dog
was use to the sound of a ringing bell before receiving his food. Eventually,
Pavlov removed the food from the experiment, but the dog retained the
conditioned response of salivating whenever he heard the bell ring. Thus a
conditioned response without positive nor negative reinforcement. Alex's
conditioned response was to fall to the "sickness" when subjected to Beethoven.
With the sickness being the conditioned response, there is no Reinforcement
because the sounds of Beethoven were not intentional, thus not needing
reinforcement.
However, Alex's trauma could also be referred to as a Skinner approach to
treatment. Skinner's theory was that one could achieve a conditioned response by
giving the subject positive or negative reinforcement. In his experiments, a
mouse was put in a cage with nothing but a pressable button and a light. When
the bar was depressed, the light flashed and food was delivered into the cage.
If the mouse were dropped into a similar cage, it would be safe to assume that
it would retain the reaction to hit a bar and receive food. The conditioned
response was to hit the bar when hungry. The reinforcement was the food that was
provided by completing the response. In Alex's case, the reinforcement would be
the metal satisfaction of not going through with his violent needs when he is
subjected to violent surroundings.
In conclusion, the theories used as a basis behind Stanley Kubrik's A
Clockwork Orange, resemble that of the theories that came from the greater
thinkers of modern time. Alex, the guinea pig in this tale, is a classic example
of many psychologist's case studies, and could be analyzed differently from each.Partner sites: Study Spanish in Spain, Pug, and Free Argumentative and Persuasive Essays