Synopsis: A pregnant Lwaxana Troi comes to Deep Space Nine to seek refuge from her husband; meanwhile an alien female visits the station and entrances Jake Sisko.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of one of Carl (C. G.) Jung’s central theories. How bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious, when acknowledged and integrated into the Logos-driven rational conscious ego, make it more flexible, and stronger, and the psyche more whole.
In “The Muse” two alien females arrive on Deep Space Nine. Lwaxana Troi arrives to seek the protection of Odo. She is pregnant with a male child and the laws of the planet from which her current husband, Jeyal, comes from, Tavnia, believe in strict separation of the genders until a child becomes 16. Which means that he will take her boy at birth and she will not be able to see him for 16 years, unless Odo can devise a way to stop it. Odo researches Tavnian law and discovers that if he marries Troi her current husband will have no claim to the child. They marry, but in her last scene in the episode she leaves for Betazed to have her child. She tells Odo that he wants someone to take care of, while she wants someone to love her. Meanwhile, Jake Sisko observes an unusual female alien arrive on the station and when Onaya introduces herself to him at Quark’s, she tells him that she can make him a great writer. He falls under Onaya’s spell and while she does allow him to write passionately, she also extracts so much energy from him that he nearly dies before their bond can be broken. In the last scene of the episode, he wonders how he will get the words out of himself and onto the page without Onaya. His father tells him that he will be able to, because the words were always inside him.
In this episode, both Troi and Onaya can be seen as embodiments of anima energy, traditionally described as the inner feminine or Eros within an individual that identifies as male, although the binary and heteronormative slant of this definition is currently being reimagined. That being said, when Troi came to Deep Space Nine and sought out Odo’s attention, she allowed him to come in contact with a part of himself that he seldom explores. And even though this wasn’t the romance that he had anticipated, he did grow. Sisko on the other hand had a very different experience of the anima. Onaya was much more predatory in her nature, and while she did unlock some elements of his unconscious, she also preyed upon his strength. Yet in the end, Sisko also increased his awareness because of his contact with Onaya. Their expansive experiences can be compared to how the conscious ego is made stronger when it integrates bits of material from the unconscious into itself, and in the process, makes the psyche stronger.
mydailysoultrek 