Synopsis: A scientist hijacks Captain Kirk’s body.
Some scholars have remarked that it is unfortunate that the final episode of Star Trek: The Original Series is “Turnabout Intruder” because of its overt misogynistic themes. And yes, being a woman hearing the line: “it is better to be dead than live alone in the body of a woman” (Singer & Wallerstein, 1969), is emotionally charged for me. But beyond that, this episode, in spite of the sexist tropes, does allow me to write about one of Carl (C. G.) Jung’s concepts, albeit one which is also androcentric in nature, that of the anima in a man and the animus in the woman. More specifically, “Turnabout Intruder” illustrates the negative aspect of this archetype. Also, Jung’s writings are heterocentric, which also make them problematic in today’s world. That being said, please understand in reading this, that I do not wish that to be the case, but I need to use his terminology to explain my point.
For the record, Jung wrote extensively about the anima in a man, often relating it to a man’s soul-image, but then more specifically to those feminine traits inside a male psyche that the conscious ego repressed. Or that the anima was the ideal woman of a man’s soul and that he projected this anima image onto a potential mate. A love interest would be a woman who was able to accept this projection.
When it came to the animus in a woman, however, Jung’s writings are much less extensive, perhaps since he was a man with an anima and not a woman with an animus. Which in those terms would mean that Jung could not necessarily know what it was like to have an animus, only what it felt like to be the object of an animus projection, a positive one as well as a negative one. As Jung was a human being, it is only natural that he was more comfortable with being the object of a positive animus projection, rather than a negative one. Which is a way to explain, but not excuse some of the sexist statements he made, particularly in his essay “The Syzygy: Anima and Animus”; about the negative animus, most specifically how: “no logic on earth can shake [a woman] if she is ridden by the animus” (Jung, 1959/1969, p. 23 [CW 9ii, para. 29]).
And while it may be the “animus-ridden” Dr. Janice Lester that causes the “transfer of consciousness” in “Turnabout Intruder” (Singer & Wallerstein, 1969), once her consciousness enters and takes control of Captain James T. Kirk’s body, Kirk acts out in the most stereotypical negative female traits of the feminine anima – jealousy, rage, and as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott says: “red-faced with hysteria” (Singer & Wallerstein, 1969). Kirk’s consciousness, which in the body of Lester is now a positive animus, and it is the traits of “logic and objectivity” (Jung, 1921/1969, p. 469 [CW 6, para. 805]), which Jung attributed to a positive animus, that allow Kirk’s consciousness in Lester’s body to save the day.
So overall, even though there is no denying the misogynistic and sexist tropes of this episode, there was still something to learn here.
References:
Jung, C. G. (1969) Psychological types. In R.F.C. Hull (Trans.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 6). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published in 1921)
Jung, C. G. (1969). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self. In R.F.C. Hull (Trans.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 9ii). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Original work published in 1959)
Singer, A. H. (Writer), & Wallerstein, H. (Director). (1969, June 3). Turnabout intruder (Season 3, Episode 24 [TV series episode]. In G. Roddenberry (Executive Producer), Star trek: The original series. Paramount Television, Norway Corporation.
Original post created 3 April 2021
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