Synopsis: After going through an energy field, the Enterprise’s computer starts playing practical jokes on her crew.
In this episode, after traveling through an energy field, the computer that runs the Enterprise, the ultimate representation of the Logos– driven rational, conscious ego, starts acting irrationally. This is a shock to her crew, who usually consider themselves rational when compared to alien species. Yet in this analogy, with the Enterprise’s computer as conscious ego, the crew represents the Eros-driven unconscious, and the Enterprise could be seen as the psyche, or psychic vessel.
The computer then begins to act in a way that resembles Freudian slips in humans – letting little bits of unconscious energy, into the vessel that contains them all. It seems that the energy field that the Enterprise traveled through somehow loosened the repressed bits of the Enterprise computer’s artificial intelligence.
Put in this position, as being the unconscious, all the crew members can do is try to break through the consciousness of the computer, using the same methods that what Carl (C.G.) Jung described as complexes use to attract the attention of the conscious ego. When Captain James T. Kirk tricks the computer into doing something that will return it to “normal,’ Kirk is embodying this concept from depth psychology. Once an inconsistency is acknowledged and dealt with, then equilibrium is restored, and the psyche can continue on in its adventures.
Original post created 26 April 2021
mydailysoultrek 