Synopsis: The crew of the Enterprise encounter a female alien who claims to be the devil.
In this episode the irrational unconscious archetypal figure of the anima, here in her most negative form, is seen in confrontation with the rational conscious ego. The anima in the form of the character Ardra, the rational ego embodied in the character of Captain Jean-Luc Picard.
The anima as described by Carl (C. G.) Jung is that internal opposite found in a man’s unconscious psyche; animus being the corresponding inner opposite in a woman’s psyche. This was how Jung originally stated his theory, but in the last hundred years there has been much debate over this idea, not only as being androcentric, but also heterocentric. I will not get into that here but do note that there are problems with this theory.
From a feminist critique perspective there may also be an issue as Ardra being a manifestation of all the traits that the conscious ego may consider negative, conniving, exploitative, sexual, and the list goes on, while Picard is the symbol of rationality. He tries to find a way to nullify the contract that the population of Ventax II made with Ardra in a logical and justified manner.
Picard employs logic, assigning the android second officer Lt. Commander Data to study the contract that bound the two parties a thousand years ago, and seems to find a loophole to defeat the deal. Yet, in order to do so, he must be just as devious as Ardra is, to prove that he she is not in fact who she claims to be.
This involves using the Trickster function which we all have unconsciously but can arise to save us when we need to call upon it. This is part of the Eight-Function Model of Jungian typology as introduced by Jung in Psychological Types, which was the basis for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the MBTI, which was expanded upon by John Beebe, to include the unconscious opposites to our conscious types, and then delineated by Carol Shumate in her book Projection and Personality Development via the Eight-Function Model.
As rational as Picard is, it is a gut hunch, from his unconscious Trickster function, that there is something hidden in how Ardra presents herself that saves the day. Picard finds what is behind her power, a spaceship that responds to her signals, and uses the very same means to prove she is a fraud. Thereby nullifying the contract with the female that is impersonating Ardra and saving the planet and the Enterprise from her enslavement.
Original post created 7 September 2021
mydailysoultrek 