Synopsis: While using a device that allows him to interface with a mechanical probe to try and save the crew aboard a vessel trapped in a planet’s atmosphere, Lt. Commander La Forge comes across an image of his mother, that is actually an alien pleading for assistance.
This episode illustrates how messages received from our irrational unconscious, particularly those holding the powers of archetypal energy, are able to rise to the level of consciousness to reach one’s rational ego.
In “Interface” Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge is working with a device that allows him to use the implants that allow his visor to communicate with his brain, to see through a mechanical probe. At the same time, he learns that his mother, Captain La Forge, along with her ship, the Hera, and her crew, have been reported as missing. When the probe interface device is used to try to save the Raman, a Federation science vessel trapped in a planet’s atmosphere, La Forge believes that he sees an image of his lost mother directing him where to find her ship, the Hera. The need to try to save his mother is so great that La Forge disobeys orders and tries to rescue her, only to find that it is not his mother but a member of a race of aliens that were trapped in the Raman when it entered the planet’s atmosphere and that need to go further into the atmosphere to survive.
It is not by accident that these aliens who were able to communicate through images they found in La Forge’s mind chose his mother’s likeness to plead their case. They chose her image because the archetypal energy to protect a member of one’s family is profound in the human psyche. The aliens needed to get La Forge’s attention urgently and chose a way that elicited great emotional resonance. This is also how complexes are able to bring bits of unconscious material to the awareness of the conscious ego in our psyches. Carl (C. G.) Jung described complexes as feeling toned, because they make us aware of something through intense emotion. Often, complexes make us aware of something by projecting its contents onto another. As I wrote in my blog for the last episode, “Liaisons,” projection is what happens when an individual sees something in another individual that mirrors something that is in their unconscious. If the projection is positive, then either romance or friendship is possible. If the projection is of a bit of unconscious psychic material that the conscious ego deems negative, then tension will ensue between the individuals until the projection is acknowledged and lifted. Here by eliciting La Forge’s love for his mother, the aliens were able to convince him to rescue them. Without that, it is unlikely that he would have gone against orders to do their bidding.
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