A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Quite a while ago, I read an amazing book by a man named Anthony Burgess, 'A Clockwork Orange.' Within the book, there were some interesting things that made me enjoy the book much more. 'A Clockwork Orange' is fictional, but there is a point which the author explores which is the Ludovico technique.
'A Clockwork Orange' is a dystopian novel based on aversion therapy. According to Wikipedia, Aversion therapy is a form of psychological treatment in which the patient is exposed to a stimulus while simultaneously being subjected to some form of discomfort.
This Ludovico Technique is supposed to cause the person to associate the stimulus with a morbid sinister sensation to inhibit a particular behaviour.
The Ludovico Technique
In the book, Alex, the teenage protagonist, is injected with sickness prompting drugs while observing graphically fierce movies, inevitably moulding him to end up extremely sick with the idea of violence consuming him.
The reason Alex was injected with this drug was to condition him into experiencing severe nausea when experiencing or thinking about violence. Consequently, the result gives Alex a harsh hatred towards violence. This moulds him into a being incapable of murder as the thought of murder gives him great pain and nausea.
However, one outcome of the therapy was that Alex was unable to protect himself using violence which made him pretty powerless. He is also cannot think about having sexual intercourse or touch a naked woman without feeling symptoms of pain and nausea.
Is Conditioning Happening Now?
Yes. This conditioning is happening everywhere and all the time. You are always being conditioned, and you are conditioning yourself. If you think about it, if you turn on your computer, you are being conditioned by the web. Turn on your TV; the media is conditioning you. You cannot escape it, and you'll be oblivious to it when it is happening.
Regarding what happened to Alex, I believe it is definitely real the conditioning that happens. We might not get conditioned on such an extreme scale, but it is still occurring. You can train yourself to be conditioned to anything, including pain.
You can tolerate pain much more by exposing yourself to the same stimulus regularly. If you cut yourself every day, you will get used to it; this is how self-harming starts out. This can also be caused by other people. If you are teased every day, you will either tolerate it more or endure it more, and the bullying will consume you mentally.