Synopsis: Captain Sisko has visions of himself, his family, friends, and crew in 1950s American on Earth.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how dangerous it can be when the Logos-driven rational conscious ego becomes overwhelmed with material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious.
In “Far Beyond the Stars” a war-fatigued Captain Benjamin Sisko begins imagining himself as Benny Russell, a science fiction writer in 1950s Earth. His father, Joseph Sisko, he imagines as a preacher. Some of the Deep Space Nine crew and residents work at the same science fiction magazine as he does. Captain Kasidy Yates appears as Russell’s love interest, who works at a diner. He hears the preacher telling him to write the truth, that it will set him free, and Sisko, as Russell, writes a science fiction story he titles “Deep Space Nine,” about a space station in the future, that has a black man in command. He believes it is the best work he has written, although he cannot get it published, with a black man as a hero in 1950s America. The association between Sisko and Russell becomes so strong that at the end of the episode there is a question as to which one is the dream and which one is the dreamer.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what it must have been like for Carl (C. G.) Jung, when he first tried to engage his unconscious, and from that excursion into the other world came back with The Black Books and The Red Book, which became the foundation for his theories in analytical psychology. One of the characters in The Red Book, Elijah, can be compared to Sisko’s father appearing as a preacher telling him to write the truth, that it will set him free. Jung’s father was a preacher by the way. Yates can also be analogized to Salome, the embodiment of love that was also one of the characters in The Red Book. At the end of his life, in Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung also questioned which realm was the dream and which world reality, much as Sisko did when he regained consciousness in the Infirmary. Both had a very hard time separating themselves from the unconscious once they became overwhelmed by it, and this is the danger of delving into working with unconscious material. Yet the reward is great, if the work can be done healthily.
mydailysoultrek 