Synopsis: A woman from Quark’s past comes aboard Deep Space Nine.
This episode focuses on how love can be the catalyst to opening up the relationship
between the Logos-driven rational conscious ego and the Eros-driven irrational unconscious.
In “Profit and Loss” a Cardassian woman, Professor Natima Lang, along with her students Rekelen and Hogue, are forced to seek assistance on Deep Space Nine after their vessel has sustained damage. Lang is a woman from Quark’s past, the love of his life, but she is also engaged in political activities on Cardassia that are seen as revolutionary and dangerous. Quark’s love for Lang causes him to act in ways completely different from what we are used to seeing him do.
Quark, as a businessperson, is almost always seen as acting from a rational ego perspective – especially if we consider that the rational ego acts in ways that are consistent with what it perceives as its main objective, even if that is to amass wealth as a means of security. But love, danger, upheaval, these are all impulses that derive their strength from the instinctual level of the unconscious. In this episode Quark is moved by love out from the security of what his rational ego would normally have him do. He risks security, and in some respects, his own life. And even though Quark does not achieve his desire for Lang to be with him, he does move toward psychic wholeness just by allowing himself to be moved by his desire for her. This is just how individuals are able to make their rational conscious egos stronger by allowing bits of unconscious material to integrate with it, in the efforts for the psyche to become more whole.
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