Synopsis: The Enterprise provides asylum for a defecting Romulan officer, who tells them of a secret plan the Romulans have for starting a war with the Federation.
In “The Defector,” the biggest issue for Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew is whether or not to believe the information that the defecting Romulan officer is giving them. In depth psychological terms, one interesting aspect of this is the interaction between some of the officers on the Enterprise, and how they try to process the information based on their psychological types.
The typology of Carl (C. G.) Jung identifies how individuals take in information, how they process it, and how they see themselves in relation to their environment.
In the episode, Picard asks for the input from Lt. Commander Data, the android bridge officer. Picard tells Data that he is seeking his clarity of thought and objectivity, which would lead us to believe that Data is a thinking type. As someone who possesses thinking as their dominant function, it means that feeling is their inferior function. This is evidenced in a conversation between Data and Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge, when Data asks how humans use feelings to make decisions. La Forge tells Data that although feelings can get in the way of human judgment, that “we need them to help us fill in the missing pieces because we almost never have all the facts.” Data then reasons that “a person fills in the missing pieces of the puzzle with his own personality, resulting in a conclusion based as much on instinct and intuition as on fact” (Moore & Scheerer, 1990).
Data has described what happens when an individual is able to integrate not only the dominant way that one processes information, but also the inferior function, and the second and third preferred functions as well. Teaching us how to know how we take in information and relate to the world is the purpose of Jung’s typology, which was later incorporated into the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
Reference:
Moore, R. D. (Writer), & Scheerer, R. (Director). (1990, January 1). The defector (Season 3, Episode 10) [TV series episode]. In G. Roddenberry & R. Berman (Executive Producers), Star trek: The next generation. Paramount Television.
Original post created 3 August 2021
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