Synopsis: Captain Archer is gifted with three Orion Slave Girls.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of how dangerous it can be when the conscious ego is dismissive of bits of material from the unconscious that come into its purview.
In “Bound” while traveling to a star system to evaluate it for potential star bases, the Enterprise crew is hailed by an Orion named Harrad-Sar. He tells Captain Jonathan Archer that he has a business proposal for him and invites him aboard his vessel. Archer and Lieutenant Malcolm Reed go to meet Harrad-Sar, and three Orion Slave Girls dance for them. Harrad-Sar gives the women to Archer as a thank you for speaking to Starfleet on his behalf about a joint magnesite operation. Once aboard Enterprise, the women seem to give off a particular pheromone which is driving the male crewmembers aboard Enterprise to distraction and combat. One even sabotages the warp drive, disabling many ship functions. A communications device is found in the quarters of one of the women. She has been in contact with Harrad-Sar, who is not interested in a mining agreement, he wants to capture Enterprise and bring Archer’s head back to the syndicate. At this point, Harrad-Sar explains to Archer, that in Orion society it is the males, not the females who are the slaves. In any case the plot to take Enterprise is foiled and the women are returned to Harrad-Sar’s ship.
In this episode, when Harrad-Sar tells Archer that he is a slave to the Orion women he presented to Archer and not the other way around, this can be compared to when the conscious ego, acknowledges and integrates bits of unconscious material into itself. When Archer was introduced to the Orion women, by way of them dancing for him, he assumed that like on Earth, that women were deemed by Orion males as subservient to them. In spite of how much power these women had over his crew, Archer did not for an instant believe that the women were in control. Quite the contrary, he even told Navaar when she was first on Enterprise, that the women were no longer slaves. That they could be whatever they wanted to be. This blindness to the power of these women almost led Archer to losing Enterprise and his life. This can be analogized to when the conscious ego is confronted by new information from the unconscious and fails to understand its value. Conversely, if the conscious ego acknowledges bits of unconscious material and integrates them into itself, it becomes stronger, and the psyche more whole.
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