(Coale 12).
             Burgess believes so passionately in Manichee because it accurately explains to him the condition of mankind, insisting as it does on the duality of nature, man's struggle between the "perfection of spirit" and "the mire of evil". Many of Burgess's characters are failed or despondent Catholics and are fully aware of the "heresy" that tempts them (De Vitis 96).
             Anthony Burgess was best known for A Clockwork Orange, a novel that concerns itself with one of the aforementioned religious problems: the nature of human will and the importance of individual choice in a socialized and dehumanized world (De Vitis 94). Burgess declares, "Choice is all that matters, and to impose the good is evil. To act evil is better than to have good imposed" (Coale 9).
             The novel is essentially an antiutopian nightmare that can be read as an answer to and a rejection of the main ideas of psychologist B. F. Skinner. These ideas consisted of reforming criminals by limiting the subjects' freedom of choice to what society termed "goodness." This effort struck Burgess as "most sinful," and his novel is, another other things, an attempt to clarify the issues involved in the use of such methods (Aggler 175).
             Burgess's attitude towards psychiatrists who accept the premises of behaviorist psychology may be inferred by A Clockwork Orange, in which the main character, Alex, triumphs over "will-sapping behaviorist reformers" and rega
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