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 eac...
