Synopsis: Ensign Mariner tries to find evidence that proves her mother is innocent of the charges against her.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of Carl G. (C.G.) Jung’s concept of a feeling-toned complex.
In “Grounded” while the U.S.S. Cerritos is impounded in spacedock, Ensign Beckett Mariner is determined to prove her mother, Captain Carol Freeman, is innocent of the charges against her for playing a role in the destruction of Pakled Planet. Mariner learns from Ensign Bradward (Brad) Boimler that he has a log that will help her case on Cerritos, and Mariner enlists the aid of Ensigns Boimler, Samanthan (Sam) Rutherford, and D’Vana Tendi to get aboard the impounded vessel to obtain it. The elaborate plot involves going to Starfleet Transport Facility to use its transporter pad to travel to Historic Bozeman, where they steal a replica of the Phoenix, the first warp driven Earth vessel, to reach Cerritos. Once there, Mariner discovers that Boimler’s logs are not helpful, and decides to take the Cerritos to find evidence of a Klingon plot. To do this, she puts Boimler, Rutherford, and Tendi on a shuttle and programs it to return to Earth. But Boimler reprograms the shuttle to return to Cerritos, and the three try to stop Mariner. Starfleet Security then appears to take back Cerritos, when Mariner admits that she could not help herself, she needed to do something to save her mother. Just as a security team comes aboard Cerritos, so does Captain Freeman and Admiral Alonzo Freeman, telling everyone that the charges against Mariner’s mother have been dropped because a black ops team learned that the Pakleds destroyed their own planet in hopes of being relocated on one with better resources.
In this episode, when Mariner tells Boimler, Rutherford, and Tendi that she could not help herself, that she had to do something to help prove her mother’s innocence, this can be seen as an illustration of a feeling-toned complex. Jung wrote that the way one knows that one is in the throes of a complex, is that you cannot help but to act in a certain way, even though if you rationally thought about it, you might act differently. However, Jung believed that complexes were not necessarily negative, that they were opportunities to gain self-knowledge, through what Jung called the individuation process. The first steps in the individuation process are to “discover the feeling-toned contents” (1957/1969, p. 86 [CW 8, para. 178]). This is because once the conscious ego becomes aware of a complex, which is a bit of unconscious material, it can then integrate it into itself to become stronger, and make the psyche more whole. Much the way that when Mariner explains her motivations to her friends, they understand why she is behaving the way that she is. They may not agree with it, but once it is out in the open, it can be addressed.
Reference:
Jung, C. G. (1969). The transcendent function. In R. F. C. Hull (Trans.) The collected works of C.G. Jung (Vol. 8, pp. 57-91). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1957)
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