Synopsis: When Voyager encounters debris from a destroyed Borg cube, Seven of Nine begins to experience personalities of those that have been assimilated.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C. G.) Jung called individuation, the process by which a psyche becomes more whole. This occurs when the Logos-driven rational conscious ego incorporates bits of material from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious into itself. Sometimes, as is the case here, entering into the process takes courage.
In “Infinite Regress” when Voyager and her crew come across a debris field of a destroyed Borg cube, Seven of Nine starts acting out in different personalities. Lt. B’Elanna Torres discovers that there is a neuro-interlink frequency coming from the debris field that is causing the personalities to arise in Seven. In the debris field a vinculum, the central processing device of the Borg cube is found. The vinculum is beamed aboard Voyager and when examined, it is determined that a virus has infected it. Seven tells The Doctor that if Borg drones malfunctioned as she had they would be killed. This may have been what happened on the cube. The vinculum is disabled and its link with Seven severed. Seven recovers.
In this episode the virus that disabled the Borg cube can be seen as a psychic wound and the neuro-interlink that reached out to Seven can be analogized to a complex. A complex being one way that bits of unconscious material comes into the awareness of the conscious ego. And although sometimes this can be unpleasant, as it was here, it also is an opportunity for growth. At the end of the episode, Seven has incorporated bits of at least one of the personalities from the experience, that of the playful child. Seven assigns the young Naomi Wildman the task of acquainting her with play. For a character such as Seven, who in the past believed any recreation was irrelevant, this is indeed a step away from one-sidedness, which makes the ego stronger and the psyche more whole.
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