Released: 17 November 1994
Synopsis: Captain Picard and the crew of U.S.S. Enterprise D enlist the aid of Captain Kirk to defeat an El-Aurian scientist’s plot to enter the Nexus.
This film can be seen as an analogy as to what happens in one’s psyche when one becomes too one-sided in favoring the Logos-driven rational conscious ego and suppresses or represses the Eros-driven, irrational instincts and urges of the unconscious – and then the emotions break through.
In Star Trek: Generations there are several levels in which we are shown how irrational emotions from the unconscious can create dire circumstances. In two parallel plot lines, emotions are plunged into with unforeseen results.
On one level, we watch how Lt. Commander Data, the android science officer aboard the Enterprise D, has to deal with dark emotions, when he decides to activate the emotions chip into his neural net when he is frustrated that he cannot understand humor. But by accessing emotions, he not only learns of humor, but of fear, pain, regret, and a host of other feelings he does not know how to control. But Captain Jean-Luc Picard advises Data: “Part of having feelings is learning to integrate them into your life, Data, learning to live with them no matter what the circumstances” (Carson, 1994). Data, being a being of rational consciousness is overwhelmed, yet soldiers onward.
On a larger scale we also see how the long-lived El-Aurian scientist, Dr. Tolian Soran, will do anything in his power, no matter how devastating the results to millions of others, to rejoin the Nexus. The Nexus, which appears as energy ribbon appearing every 39 years being something that Guinan, another El-Aurian, warns Picard, is incredibly addicting because “it was like being inside joy” (Carson, 1994). It is a place where time and space have no meaning or limits, much like our collective unconscious. When Soran enters the ribbon, Picard too is trapped in it and by uniting with Captain James T. Kirk, who entered it 78 years prior, they are able to go back together to moments before Soran enters the Nexus to prevent the devastation he wreaked.
Both of these scenarios illustrate how when we live in a world that is so one-sidedly rational, as is the case in Starfleet, we tend to devalue the irrational. This can give it great power when it finally bursts through into consciousness in what Carl (C. G.) Jung calls a complex. And although, as I have written before, when a complex is understood as an opportunity for self-knowledge instead of destruction, it can be welcomed. But when one is caught in the grips of one, it is hard to feel this. But if one does eventually acknowledge these bits of material from the unconscious in a way aimed at learning about ourselves through them, then they can be integrated into the conscious ego, making it stronger, and also making the psyche more whole.
Reference:
Carson, D. (Director). (1994). Star trek: Generations [Film]. Paramount Pictures.
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