The Society of Analytical Psychology
In Partnership with
EVERYMAN
IN THERAPY
Adapted from Anthony Burgess’s 1962 novella, Stanley Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange” is a thought-provoking, compelling and disturbing tale about ultra-violent youth gangs in a dystopian future. The souring of the Swinging 60s got properly underway with this radioactively outrageous and audacious film, presaging a new zeitgeist in the 1970s of violence, anger, misogyny and the degradation of public space.
The setting is an unspecified English city. Crime is rampant with prison congestion reaching emergency levels. Gangs of young ruffians roam the streets, engaging in a virtually unchecked reign of terror of rape, robbery, beatings and murder. Alex Delarge leads a quartet of “droogs” who spend their nights engaged in drug fuelled acts of grotesque violence. Later Alex is captured and selected for the Government’s experimental rehabilitation programme.
Controversial when released, the film was self-banned by Kubrick as he was badly shaken by press reports of real-life crimes supposedly inspired by the film. Its tone is bitingly satirical, ominous and razor-sharp in addressing the issue of dehumanisation of people and the growth of sociopathic and psychotic extremities in Society. Understood as part allegorical cautionary tale, part dark humour, and part drama, the film confronts the horror of the mindless and soulless world inhabited by Alex and his associates, and the equally mindless and soulless responses delivered to Alex by the Government when he is captured. The dilemma is that acts against society are inextricably linked to a sickness and malaise within it. Sadism is a moral perversion in the outer world, yet mirror states of mind that we encounter in patients in their inner world.
The issues raised are as relevant to today’s society as they were when the film was made. These will be discussed following the film in a dialogue between Rupert Tower (Jungian analyst) and Katherine Killick (Jungian analyst), and chaired by Adam Reynolds (Head of Brand Partnerships, Everyman). Do join us!
To book: event page
