Synopsis: Earth’s embassy on Vulcan is bombed and Enterprise is sent to investigate.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of projection; when an individual’s Logos-driven rational conscious ego projects upon another bits of material from that individual’s own Eros-driven irrational unconscious.
In “The Forge” Admiral Maxwell Forrest talks with Ambassador Soval at the United Earth Embassy on Vulcan. Soval telling Forrest how humans are the one species Vulcans cannot define and that they remind Vulcans of themselves before they embraced logic. Then the embassy is bomb and Forrest is killed. Enterprise is sent to investigate, and it turns out that responsibility for the attack belongs to a sect of Vulcans, the Syrrannites, who have a different interpretation of the teachings of Surak than the mainstream culture. Captain Jonathan Archer and Sub-Commander T’Pol head out into a vast Vulcan desert called the Forge to locate the Syrrannites. Soval, who has at times been critical of humans, becomes the crew’s ally in the investigation. In this episode, when Soval tells Forrest that humans are the one species that Vulcans cannot figure out and that he believes it is because humans remind Vulcans of themselves before they embraced logic, he is in one way defining the process of projection. Projection is when individuals project bits of material from their own unconscious onto others. If the material is considered positive, friendship or romance may ensue, if the material is considered negative, then animosity. Here the unconscious material seems ambivalent, which is likely why the Vulcans cannot quite define humans. But when there is a realization that projection is occurring, then bits of material can be integrated into an individual’s conscious ego, and change and growth are possible, making the psyche is made more whole.
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