How did I decide to work on Star Trek: The Next Generation after years spent writing about the complex intersections between psychoanalysis and literature, film, and the sociohistorical problems of anti-Semitism, racism, and colonialism?
It began one evening while channel surfing. I landed on an episode about an inter-species love affair that raised intriguing questions about desire, identity, sexuality, and who—or what—one loves when one falls in love. Adding to my curiosity was the fact that a main character in the series, Counselor Deanna Troi, was a bi-species empath (half human, half Betazoid), who served as the chief psychologist for the crew and families aboard the Star-ship Enterprise. After a few more episodes, I was convinced that the series had something to say about intrapsychic and not just interstellar exploration, and about the unconscious dynamics of individuals, families, and groups. I was hooked.
As I read through the numerous academic studies of Star Trek, I was struck by how enthusiastically scholars discussed questions of race, class, gender, capitalism, and colonialism in The Next Generation. They said little, if anything, however, about the psychological dimensions of the android Data's quest to feel human, or about Counselor Troi's role as a clinician. Data was of interest primarily as an incarnation of the promise—and also the dangers—of technology, and of the complexity of living and working alongside a sentient android. Troi was generally dismissed as a sexist caricature of women as overly empathic, nurturing caretakers. Moreover, she couldn't be taken seriously as a professional since she almost never practiced therapy.
These responses were surprising since it seemed to me that Data's desire to experience human emotion had a psychoanalytic richness and complexity that begged to be explored. At the same time, Counselor Troi appeared to be practicing a great deal of therapy. She just was not doing it in a classical fashion with patients lying on a couch in her office. Instead, she provided therapy wherever and whenever it was needed: on the bridge, in the lounge, in the ship's hallways, even on other planets. Far from a non-practicing, unprofessional maternal figure, Troi struck me as an astute, analytically oriented clinician. She was well versed in the workings of the unconscious, defenses, and transference, and she displayed a sophisticated capacity to hold, contain, and (not surprisingly for an empath), empathically attune to others. My mission was clear: not to explore outer space, but to elaborate the ways in which the characters and stories of Star Trek: The Next Generation dramatized the complex world of intrapsychic, inner space.
Certainly, not all works of pop culture can sustain intensive psychoanalytic inquiry or reveal an awareness of mental functioning and analytic process that clinicians or academics would find of interest. But just as Data's desire to learn to dance can be understood as the story of a failed therapeutic encounter that impinges on the android's quest to become more human, so I expect to find, as I write about other episodes involving alien encounters, technological advances, and successful and aborted relationships, tacit dramas about unconscious process, psychic development, and the way analytic therapy works to alleviate suffering. Stay tuned.
Esther Rashkin, Ph.D., L.C.S.W., author of Unspeakable Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Culture, and Family Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Narrative, is University of Utah professor of French and cultural studies, former APsaA Fellow, and in private practice, Salt Lake City.