Synopsis: The crews from the U.S.S. Cerritos and the U.S.S. Carlsbad must work together to complete a mission on a scientific outpost.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C. G.) Jung called projection—when an individual’s conscious ego projects contents of one’s own unconscious material onto another.
“In Mining the Mind’s Mines” the U.S.S. Cerritos and the U.S.S. Carlsbad are tasked to work together to address a situation that has erupted on Jengus IV between the Scrubble and Starfleet scientists in an outpost located there. On the planet, Lt. Commander Steve Stevens is put in charge of the ensigns from the Cerritos and the Carlsbad. He assigns the ensigns from the Carlsbad the duty of dismantling the outpost, and the ensigns from the Cerritos with the task of collecting psychic mine orbs. Each group of ensigns eyes the others as they part ways to carry out their missions, and then try to outdo each other. Stevens returns and when he is told that the Cerritos ensigns are trying to keep up with the fast pace that the Carlsbad ensigns are setting, he tries to help but ends up breaking one of the orbs. This results in the orbs creating nightmare scenarios for everyone on the planet. All the ensigns are forced to seek shelter in a cave, where they then realize that they are all the same. They then uncover a plot to steal federation information. Meanwhile, on Cerritos, Captain Carol Freeman works with Captain Maier of the Carlsbad to negotiate a treaty.
In this episode when the ensigns from the Carlsbad initially encounter the ensigns from the Cerritos, they are projecting onto them the stories that they have been told about them. To the Cerritos ensigns, it appears that the Carlsbad team sees them as inferior to themselves, so that they try to outdo them, when in fact, the Carlsbad team was projecting onto the Cerritos ensigns their own feelings of being inferior to them. When the two teams are forced to face each other, they could see the others for who they really were and learn their truth—that each of the teams of ensigns felt inferior to the other, which caused them to act competitively instead of in harmony. But once this was acknowledged, the two teams worked together and saved themselves and the mission. This dynamic was also occurring aboard the Cerritos between the captains of the two vessels. Once the captains stopped projecting their insecurities upon one another they could see each other for who they were and work together to foil the plot created by the Scrubble and the scientists to serendipitously obtain classified information. These scenarios can be analogized to how projection allows the conscious ego to become aware of unconscious material and integrate it into itself to become stronger and make the psyche more whole.
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