Synopsis: The Starfleet staff aboard the station are confronted by a Bajoran spiritual leader with different ideas than theirs.
In this episode, the Logos-driven rational conscious ego, here embodied by the Starfleet staff aboard the station are forced to make accommodations for the Eros-driven irrational unconscious, symbolized here by a fundamentalistic Bajoran spiritual leader, Vedek Winn.
In “In the Hands of the Prophets” Winn first makes her position clear when she visits the school where Mrs. Keiko O’Brien teaches. Mrs. O’Brien, married to Chief of Operations, Miles O’Brien, espouses the beliefs of Starfleet and the Federation, and as she tells Major Kira Nerys: “I’m not teaching any philosophy. What I’m trying to teach is pure science.” Kira responds: “Some might say pure science taught without a spiritual context is a philosophy, Mrs. O’Brien” (Wolfe & Livingston, 1993).
Kira has a point. Starfleet and the Federation while doing lip service to different religious beliefs, in reality are behaving just as the rational ego does when it is first confronted with psychic influences, or bits of unconscious matter, that it can not rationally explain. It demeans them. It doesn’t want to acknowledge the importance of the unconscious, or that any of the “shadow” material belongs to our psyches. Here the shadow being any bit of unconscious material that the rational ego deems unacceptable or neglected.
The idea of compromise and that the Bajoran station that the Federation has populated with staff with the idea of assisting its return into Bajoran hands, is an exciting place for the first season of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to end. That it is not easy and that there will be many compromises, or integration of two opposites as depth psychologists would describe it, is reflective of what human psyches go through in a lifelong effort to become more whole.
Reference:
Wolfe, R. H. (Writer), & Livingston, D. (Director). (1993, June 20). In the hands of the prophets (Season 1, Episode 20) [TV series episode]. In M. Piller & R. Berman (Executive Producers), Star trek: Deep space nine. Paramount Television.
mydailysoultrek 