Synopsis: When a fatal accident occurs in Cadet Crusher’s squadron at Starfleet Academy, he is torn between his duty to honor and to his friends.
This episode highlights the idea of the tension between the opposites, which is ongoing in our psyches throughout our lives.
In “The First Duty” Cadet Wesley Crusher’s squadron leader ordered his team to perform a dangerous and outlawed maneuver, which resulted in the death of one of them. He then wants to cover up the incident by withholding information. There is not enough evidence to find him or the team guilty of anything, however Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who is at the academy to give a commencement address guesses the truth and confronts Crusher about it. Picard ends the conversation saying that if Crusher doesn’t tell the truth he will. Immediately following, the squadron leader, Cadet First Class Nicholas Lacarno, tells his team that their most important duty is to protect each other.
This quagmire between two opposite positions is something that is going on continually in our psyches. To explain this, James Hillman used the relationship between the polar opposite pair composed of the senex, or wise old man, archetype and the puer, or eternal youth, archetype as a way to interpret all the other polar archetypes in our psyche.
In “The First Duty” the senex energy is represented by Picard and the puer energy is embodied in Lacarno, and each of these energies are pushing Crusher in opposites directions. In the end he decides belatedly to disclose the information as Picard had wanted him to do, but he also suffers from this. Picard then tells him that while the future will be painful because of his actions, that he had been true to himself. Of course, this is the rational ego’s bidding. And in the end, I believe the reason Crusher chose to do what he did is that he could not live with Picard, a figure he regarded so highly, being ashamed of his actions, although choosing differently would have made life easier for all involved. This would be the bidding of the unconscious that needs Picard’s respect more than that of his companions at Starfleet Academy. From this perspective, Crusher was indeed true to himself.
Original post created 15 October 2021
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