Synopsis: When Dr. Bashir is chosen as the model for a new long term emergency medical hologram program, he is investigated, and a secret is found out.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what can happen when the bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious make their way into the awareness of the Logos-driven rational conscious ego by way of a complex, which contains both a wound and the way to heal the wound.
In “Doctor Bashir, I Presume” Dr. Louis Zimmerman, the creator of the emergency medical holographic program used aboard the U.S.S. Voyager on Star Trek: Voyager,comes to Deep Space Nine to inform Dr. Julian Bashir that he has been selected as the doctor that a new long-term version of this program will be modeled upon. Bashir requests that Zimmerman not contact his parents as part of his research into Bashir’s qualifications. So naturally, Zimmerman contacts them immediately. When Bashir’s parents arrive on the station they share a meal with Bashir, and at that time he requests that they do not speak about their secret, that Bashir was genetically enhanced as a child because he was small and not considered intelligent. This conversation is overheard, jeopardizing Bashir’s Starfleet commission, as genetically enhanced individuals are not allowed to serve in Starfleet. However, Bashir’s father agrees to go to prison for two years in exchange for Bashir being allowed to keep his position at Deep Space Nine.
Here we learn that Bashir, the ultra-intelligent chief medical officer at Deep Space Nine was not always what he appears to be. That he was a smallish child with modest intellect, and that this was a disappointment to his parents. And that because of this, they had a genetic enhancement procedure performed on him, to improve his future. This procedure being illegal and if known to Starfleet would likely cost Bashir his job. That there is a complex here cannot be denied. To feel the disappointment of one’s parents would be the initial wound. To have no choice in how to address it would be a second. To have to keep the secret that this procedure was performed on him in order to pursue one’s calling in life would be a third. Yet, when this complex is finally addressed, the outcome, while not ideal, allows Bashir to move ahead with his life, without having to hide who he is. This is what it is like when one acknowledges and works with a complex in order to make the ego stronger and the psyche more whole.
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