Synopsis: Because of a passing aggressive thought, Lt. Torres is accused of being responsible for a murder on an alien planet inhabited by telepaths.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how dangerous it is for the Logos-driven rational conscious ego to be one-sided, and particularly what happens to it when the unconscious shadow continues to be suppressed.
In “Random Thoughts” Voyager’s crew is visiting the planet Mari, which is inhabited by telepaths. Violent thoughts, let alone crime, are extremely rare in this society. However, when Captain Kathryn Janeway and Lt. B’Elanna Torres are in a marketplace negotiating for supplies with a merchant, Guill, a passerby runs into Torres and causes her to have a momentarily violent thought toward him. Later there is a fistfight and a murder in the marketplace, and the telepaths trace the single violent thought to Torres and arrest her. Lt. Commander Tuvok and Janeway conduct their own investigation, and Tuvok uncovers a black market trade in violent thoughts. And it was the illicit sharing of these thoughts that led to the attacks. While Torres had momentarily had a random violent thought, it was Guill and the black market that amplified it into being deadly.
This episode can be analogized to when the conscious ego becomes so one-sided that it rejects and suppresses even mere thoughts, or feelings, that it finds unacceptable. In depth psychological terms, these bits of unconscious material that the ego rejects are called the shadow. However, on Mari, as is the case on Earth, when something becomes outlawed it gains a certain panache among some, that will still seek out that taboo thing. The more it is banned, the greater its appeal. This is the result of a society being one-sided, preferencing some ideas and trying to suppress others that it deems inappropriate. Similarly, in the psyche, when the conscious ego continues to suppress bits of unconscious material that comes into its awareness, eventually the psychic pressure will become so great that it erupts to a point where it must be acknowledged, and in some cases integrated into the ego. When the shadow is integrated into the ego, it becomes stronger and the psyche more whole.
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