Released: 4 June 1982
Synopsis: While on a mission to find a lifeless planet on which to test the Genesis Project, Khan, a genetically enhanced human, is discovered. Learning that Captain, now Admiral, Kirk is alive, Khan plans to seek revenge upon him.
While there are many ways to look at depth psychological concepts manifested in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, this post will focus on the concept of inflation.
Inflation is a necessary step in the process of individuation, the way by which an individual becomes more whole through the union of opposites. It is that part of the process in which an individual temporarily feels possessed by an archetypal energy. That identification is very powerful and is necessary, otherwise there would be no strength in order to carry forward with the procedure. Yet, if one identifies too long or too greatly with this intense feeling of powerfulness, hubris is the result. Hubris being the highest sin among the ancient Greeks. It was also hubris that caused the punishment of Prometheus, for his usurping the power of the gods and giving it to humans.
Khan Noonien Singh, a character from the episode “Space Seed” from the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series, is an obvious embodiment of this type of hubris. He never lets anyone forget that he is the smartest and strongest individual in the room, and that he has been genetically engineered to be so. He feels that it is his god-given right to rule, sees Captain, now Admiral, James T. Kirk as his enemy and an obstacle in his right to rule, and as such seeks to destroy him in an obsessive compulsion only possible when one is possessed by the inflation of a god in one’s psyche.
Yet a more subtle form of hubris also exists in the film, the idea of the Genesis Project. The Genesis Project, the brainchild of Dr. Carol Marcus the mother of Kirk’s son David Marcus, is a terraforming process, by which a planet devoid of life can be made to be able to sustain whatever form of life that the Federation of Planets deems appropriate. Only Dr. Leonard (Bones) McCoy, who always embodies the Eros-driven emotional part of the psyche, acknowledges that this is a form of playing God and questions whether or not it is a good idea. Kirk, Mr. Spock, and the Logos-driven scientists involved with the creation of the Genesis Project, are awed by the science that has allowed them to achieve this breakthrough. But no one asks just because we can do something, should we? What gives the human species the right to inflict its will upon creation? To change the very matrix of life in order to benefit the human species over the needs or wants of others? It is the ignoring of these questions that is the manifestation of inflation in the Starfleet officers and scientists. While this may seem benign compared to the “wrath of Khan,” the inflation is just as real, and the unintended consequences of all those involved ends up as do all acts of hubris – with the high price paid in a sacrifice to the gods for daring to think we are like them.
Original post created 4 May 2021
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