Synopsis: The crew of the Infinity travel to a colony of non-corporeal beings, who have sent a telepathic message to Fugitive Zero telling them that they can help them.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of what Carl (C. G.) Jung termed the union of opposites—the conscious and the unconscious—facilitated by the transcendent function.
In “Is There in Beauty No Truth?,” Fugitive Zero receives a telepathic message from a fellow Medusan living in a colony of non-corporeal beings, that says that they can help them. Infinity travels to this colony and lands on the planet, Ovidia IV. The crew is greeted by Ion. They are told that non-corporeal beings here have living bodies that is made possible by the rings surrounding the planet. Fugitive Zero must decide if they want a bio-transfer. But Ion did not tell Fugitive Zero everything. Fugitive Zero are placed in a pod and emerge living in a corporeal body. That evening is the Feast of the Senses, which is highlighted by the Running of the Nazamon. It is the celebration of the forgotten sense, fear. The runners that survive the Nazamon will feel at one with their bodies. Fugitive Zero is invited to join in this, but later Dal R’El and Gwyndala (Gwyn) are told that those Ovidians that survive this event feel so intensely at one with their bodies that they chose never to leave the planet, because leaving will cause their bodies to deteriorate. With the help of Dal R’El, Fugitive Zero does finish the race, but decides to leave the planet with the crew in spite of the knowledge that their new corporeal body will deteriorate.
In this episode, Fugitive Zero when they were non-corporeal in their containment suit, can be analogized to the conscious ego, and after they receive a corporeal body, as the psyche’s unconscious. The unconscious contains so many feelings and sensations that the non-corporeal Fugitive Zero never knew existed. The attraction of Ovidian bodies to the once non-corporeal beings that now reside in them are so intense that they do not leave the planet that maintains the bodies and prevents them from deteriorating. But Fugitive Zero, unlike the other Ovidians, decides that he will leave the planet and go with their friends to rescue Captain Chakotay and the Protostar, regardless of the risk of their new corporeal body deteriorating. This balancing of their rational thoughts and physical sensations afforded by the body can be compared to what Jung called the union of opposites—the conscious and the unconscious—facilitated by the transcendent function. The transcendent function being the way that unconscious material is made perceivable to the conscious. “It is called ‘transcendent’ because it makes the transition from one attitude to another organically possible without loss of the unconscious” (Jung, 1958/1969, p. 73 [CW 8, para. 145]). To explain why this is necessary Jung wrote:
Conscious and unconscious do not make a whole when one of them is suppressed and injured by the other. If they must contend, let it at least be a fair fight with equal rights on both sides. Both are aspects of life. Consciousness should defend its reason and protect itself, and the chaotic life of the unconscious should be given the chance of having its way too—as much of it as we can stand. This means open conflict and open collaboration at once. That, evidently, is the way human life should be. It is the old game of hammer and anvil: between them the patient iron is forged into an indestructible whole, an “individual.” (1939/1969, p. 288 [CW 9i, para. 522])
In other words, to become stronger the conscious ego needs to acknowledge and integrate unconscious material into itself. This will also result in the psyche becoming more whole.
References:
Jung, C. G. (1969). Conscious, unconscious, and individuation (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 9 pt. 1. Archetypes and the collective unconscious (2nd ed., pp. 275-289). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1939) https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850969.275
Jung, C. G. (1969). The transcendent function (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Vol. 8. Structure and dynamics of the psyche (2nd ed., pp. 67-91). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1958) https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400850952.67
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