In Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, what is the name of the experimental treatment given to Alex?

In Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, Alex undergoes the Ludovico Technique.

The fictional treatment is designed to condition Alex against violent behavior. While strapped into a chair, he is forced to watch graphic films while receiving drugs that produce intense nausea. The authorities then present the procedure as a way to make him harmless.

The treatment creates the film’s central ethical conflict. Alex’s violent impulses are not replaced by moral understanding; instead, he becomes physically unable to choose violence without suffering. The movie therefore asks whether forced behavioral control is genuine rehabilitation or another form of state oppression.

The name comes from Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novel, which Kubrick adapted. The term is fictional and is not the name of a real clinical therapy. The film’s title refers to the broader tension between human free will and attempts to turn a person into a predictable mechanism.