Synopsis: Responding to a distress call from a science colony, the crew of the Enterprise discovers dead adults and children in service to a mysterious angel.
In spite of the title “And the Children Shall Lead” this episode illustrates how what C. G. Jung called the individuation process operates inside a human psyche.
In this episode, the children that are found alive on the planet Triacus are seemingly not conscious of the great tragedy of the death of their parents. In reviewing the logs of Professor Starnes, who led the science colony, he reports: “I’m being influenced to do things that don’t make sense . . .the enemy within.”
The phrase “the enemy within” echoing a title of an episode from the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series, and just as in that story, the “enemy within” is what Jung has called the shadow – those aspects of our personality that are suppressed by our conscious ego.
Here, it is referred to as the beast, and brings fear. Each member of the bridge crew is probed and forced to face their worst fear.
The individuation process proceeds once an aspect of our shadow is identified, our beast, and rises to the surface, to the light so to speak. This gives our conscious egos an opportunity to work with it and to try to integrate it into our psyches to make us more whole. As Captain James T. Kirk says in the episode: “My beast is gone. It lost its power in the light of reality.” And so it is. Once we are able to acknowledge aspects of our shadow and integrate them into our psyches, their power over our lives is diminished.
Original post created 11 March 2021
mydailysoultrek 