Synopsis: Kes is critically injured when she inadvertently enters a religious shrine, and Captain Janeway does everything within her power to try to save her.
This episode is an illustration of how difficult it can be to bring bits of material from the Eros-driven unconscious into the awareness of the Logos-driven rational conscious ego.
In “Sacred Ground” while on shore leave on Nechani, Kes inadvertently enters a sacred shrine and is struck down by a biogenic field that protects it. The site is sacred and only monks of the Nechisti Order may enter after they go through a purification ritual to protect them from the field’s radiation. However, Mr. Neelix discovers an ancient myth that told of a king who was granted permission to contact the Ancestorial Spirits to plead for the life of his son who had also accidentally entered the shrine. Captain Kathryn Janeway sites this precedent, and the monks allow her to go through the ritual in order to speak to the spirits on behalf of Kes. Janeway goes through the entire ritual once, but when she refuses to give up her complete belief in science, it is unsuccessful. Janeway is allowed to go back into the shrine once more and is told that the only way to save Kes is to believe in something that cannot be proven. She does, and Kes is restored.
In this episode, the only way that Janeway, who here is a physical manifestation of the rational conscious ego, can save Kes is to believe in something she does not believe in. That which cannot be explained by science. That is what the unconscious is. Because it is unconscious, the conscious ego cannot know it, except by bits of its material that come into the perception of the ego. But when the ego can integrate that which is unknowable, then it becomes much stronger and the individual more whole.
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