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September 30, 2011

Star Trek: Gene Roddenberry’s Genius View of Repressed Emotions


"Beam me up!" - DTI-VI-2012
Recently I was on a hypnosis forum following a thread about working with clients with inhibited memory recall (ie dementia). And it reminded me of the TV series, Star Trek.
Are you a Trekkie? I know I am!
As a child I was glued to the set each week to watch the hunky Captain James T. Kirk boldly go where no man has gone before. (Usually with some buxom Babe.)
The Captain had two trusty side-kicks - Scotty and Spock.
Each week “Scotty,” an anxiety-ridden Scottish engineer, would face another crisis. And each time he would report, “It can’t be done! The dylithium crystals can’t take it!” (Man, could HE use some tapping!)
And there was the pointy-eared Vulcan Chief Science Office, Spock, who generally exuded calm rational reason.
The creator of the Star Trek Series, Gene Roddenberry was a visionary. In the 1960’s he introduced us to space travel!
But Gene’s legacy was not merely an imaginative future pacing experience. It was his wicked use of metaphor. The networks declared that those of us in TV-Land weren’t ready for social commentary, however. And that’s what Star Trek was.
So Gene’s creativity (and gift to us all) was reined in for over 30 years.
It wasn’t until the 1990’s that he was finally free to unleash his genius with Star Trek: Next Generation series and Deep Space 9.
But that’s another story.
In the original Star Trek series starring William Shatner there was a particularly intriguing episode where Spock’s father went through the Vulcan version of male menopause.
Vulcan’s, as you know, are LOGICAL.
It’s not that they don’t have feelings – they just value logic over feeling. (like our culture, perhaps?) 
So over multiple generations Vulcan’s have perfected the art of repressing emotions.
Now, this is important. Their emotions haven’t gone anywhere. They’re just buried deep inside where they won’t interfere with analytical, logical thought processing. (Don’t you just love it?)
 So, from the earliest age, Vulcans are encouraged to “manage” their emotions, thus reinforcing their species superiority. And re-engineering their neural netwiring.
As you might recall, Spock was logically-disadvantaged because he had a human mother. (So WAY too much expression of emotion was modeled during his formative years.) Which raises the old ‘nature versus nurture’ debate ….
Okay, so here’s the storyline as I recall it.
All those repressed feelings inside, that have been denied expression, build up over time. And as the Vulcan male ages, unwanted feelings and emotions start pushing their way up to the surface.
It takes more effort to keep them under control, but that is the Vulcan way.
However, what eventually happens is that the learned strategy for dealing with unwanted emotional material - shoving them back down – no longer works
When the pressure reaches critical mass, the dam breaks. And a tsunami of emotion – both good and bad – overwhelms the poor Vulcan.
As you might imagine, it’s a VERY unpleasant experience!
Think about it. By the 'golden age' what resources has a Vulcan developed with respect to feeling his feelings?
None. Nada. Zippo.
So what happens when a lifetime of repressed, denied, disowned feelings (and the memories associated with them) break through to consciousness?
The Vulcans call it ‘madness’.
They might just be right!
Hope this got your neurons firing!

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