Synopsis: Seven of Nine’s efforts to upload and retain data leads to unexpected consequences.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what may happen when the Logos-driven rational conscious ego becomes too one-sided, identifying with the archetypal energy from the Eros-driven irrational unconscious. An occurrence that Carl (C. G.) Jung termed inflation.
In “The Voyager Conspiracy” Seven of Nine creates a device that will allow her to upload and retain vast amounts of data while she regenerates, or sleeps, each night. Initially, this proves useful to the ship. But soon, the increasing amount of factual data that Seven inputs into herself without context causes her to formulate conspiracy theories involving first an alien that Voyager’s crew has encountered, then Captain Kathryn Janeway, then Commander Chakotay, and finally young Naomi Wildman. The Doctor discovers that Seven’s cortical processor has malfunctioned, it is repaired, and Seven returns to gathering information at a more sustainable pace.
In this episode, when Seven feels her implants makes her superior and tries to increase her ability to upload and retain data, this can be analogized to how sometimes the conscious ego can become one-sided by inflation, identifying too long or too powerfully with the power of an archetype in the unconscious. The Doctor was able to determine easily that there was a malfunction in a mechanical device, but it can be much more difficult for humans to realize when this is occurring in their psyches. Inflation is a necessary step in the process of individuation, the process by which a psyche becomes more whole, and is normally followed by deflation, when the ego realizes it is limited and when psychic healing begins.
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