Synopsis: The U.S.S. Voyager and her crew are sent to Solum to prevent war, and in the process rescue Ilthuran and Wesley Crusher.
This episode can be seen as an illustration of the deflation of the conscious ego that occurs after inflation, in an ongoing process that Carl (C. G.) Jung called individuation.
“Brink” starts with a flashback in which Asencia tries to control the temporal worm hole. Wesley Crusher stops her and tells her that temporal technology is a danger to everyone. Meanwhile, the U.S.S. Voyager is sent to Solum to get rid of the temporal manipulation weapon to avert a war. Gwyn suggests that the Protostar crew go to Solum to rescue her father. Maj’El resigns her Starfleet commission so that she can join them. The Protostar crew, now including Maj’El, beam down to Solum. Ilthuran is in an observatory. The Protostar crew enter the observatory to find a younger version of Asencia with Ilthuran. She has been helping him and says that the older version of Asencia is holding Wesley Crusher captive. The Protostar crew split up to rescue Crusher and help Ilthuran escape. They are successful and Ilthuran and Crusher are both beamed aboard Voyager. But Crusher has been affected by Asencia’s depletion of his time traveling abilities and no longer knows what will happen next.
In this episode, when Crusher arrives on the Voyager without his time traveling abilities, this can be analogized to what happens when a conscious ego that has experienced inflation, now experiences deflation. Inflation occurs when the rational conscious ego comes in contact with bits of irrational unconscious material, and identifies too closely with the inherent archetypal power; deflation is when that identification stops. Both are necessary to what Jung called individuation, the ongoing process in which the ego acknowledges and integrates bits of unconscious material into itself, to make it stronger and the psyche more whole. But there is a danger to psychic health when either of these parts of the process is taken to extremes for an extended period of time.
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