Synopsis: Neelix is brought back to life after being killed in an away mission, which causes him to question his beliefs.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what may happen when the Logos-driven rational conscious ego coming in direct contact with the Eros-driven irrational unconscious.
In “Mortal Coil” after Neelix is pronounced dead, Seven of Nine tells The Doctor and Captain Kathryn Janeway that she can revive Neelix using altered Borg nanoprobes. Neelix recovers, but then confides to Commander Chakotay that when he was dead he did not experience what his faith has taught him he would, and that he has lost his faith. He asks Chakotay to guide him on a vision quest. Chakotay obliges this but on his vision quest Neelix is told by multiple characters that he knows what he must do. Neelix takes this to mean that he should kill himself, which he attempts to do, but doesn’t follow through with when he realizes how much he is needed on Voyager.
This episode can be interpreted as Neelix making two trips to what can be analogized to what Carl (C. G.) Jung would call the unconscious. The first, is his death, a state he was in for eighteen hours, and the second is his vision quest. After the first contact with what can be compared to the unconscious, Neelix is disappointed because he did not experience what he had anticipated. After the second confrontation with an unconscious-like state, the vision quest, Neelix jumped to conclusions in interpreting it. Both these reactions can be seen as the conscious ego trying to rationalize an experience that is, by definition, irrational. But this is to be expected, because trying to rationalize things in an effort to remain in control is what the ego does. But it is by doing something different, by acknowledging bits of unconscious material and integrating it into itself that the ego can become stronger and the psyche more whole.
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