Synopsis: A beautiful female alien is brought on board the Enterprise to serve as a gift to bring peace to two warring civilizations.
Much has been written about this episode from not only a depth psychological perspective but also from a gender studies point of view. I myself have previously written a paper on how this episode describes how the projection of our own inner ideal mate onto another describes what happens when we fall in love. But watching this episode once more, here I want to comment on the idea of the coming together in an in-between place is the space where soul is made.
James Hillman calls this in-between place where soul is made the metaxy. It has also been described by other depth psychologists as existing in the place where the unconscious and the conscious meet in our psyches.
In “The Perfect Mate” we are immediately reminded of this in-between place as after the Enterprise takes aboard Ambassador Briam of Krios and Chancellor Alrik from Valt, it will travel to a place midway between the two planets where a Ceremony of Reconciliation will be held. Kamala, the perfect mate, was to be a gift to Alrik from the people of Krios. She is an empathic metamorph, able to sense what a mate needs and wants and become that for him. It was the love by two brothers of a similar female, Garuth, that led to the war when one kidnapped her and brought her to Krios.
As it turns out in the episode, Kamala comes to a bit of a metaxy in herself. She has been born, bred, and groomed to take this role in history, and yet, while on the Enterprise, she made herself the perfect mate to Captain Jean-Luc Picard, who would be her mate of choice, if she would have had the opportunity to choose. By doing this she came to a meeting point between the duties that her rational conscious ego would have her fulfill, and the emotional needs of her irrational unconscious, that wanted her to become someone that she could feel good about being.
Original post created 18 October 2021
mydailysoultrek 