Oceans, fear and the Jungian connection in Solaris and Sphere

For years writers have dabbled in the psychological mysteries of life. Although one derives Poland and the other, the United States, and their works are separated by over twenty years, Stanislaw Lem and Michael Crichton wrote science-fiction novels that explore the relation between the human psyche and reality. Specifically, they employ the ocean as a medium to examine the human unconscious along Jungian lines. Solaris (1961) is set on a planet that is larger than Earth and covered by an ocean dotted with numerous islands and whose area is equivalent to the size of Europe. Sphere (1987) is set on Earth, on an undersea plain located one to two thousand feet beneath the surface of the South Pacific Ocean. Besides a watery setting, the two stories share other similarities: characterization of the protagonists and plot elements. Of more interest, the stories deal with a psychological theme, the interaction between the human mind's unconscious and an other, in this case, life forms, the sentient ocean of Solaris and the highly intelligent entity the sphere resting on the floor of the Pacific (199). The protagonists are not only male but are specialists in the field of psychology. Psychology is Kris Kelvin's major interest (71), and madness is his area of expertise, his subject (49). Having graduated the Solarist Institute, Kelvin accepts an invitation to join a team of three other scientists and to explore the ocean's psychic functions (171). Kelvin plans to conduct a study based on his dissertation and hopes to establish a link between the powerful emotions--despair, grief and pleasure--and the electrical discharges the ocean (175). Shortly before the young psychologist's space capsule touches down on Solaris, the team leader and director of the Solarist Institute (174) who had invited him to join the group, commits suicide. When Kelvin first encounters the remaining two team members, Snow (the cybernetics expert) and Sartorius (the physicist), he notes that they seem to be suffering extreme exhaustion, agitation, and anxiety. He soon discovers the reason. For days the two older men have been plagued by manifestations produced from each man's subconcious desire and guilt (Ziegfeld 54). The ocean has been exercising its ability to delve into the scientists' unconscious minds and precipitate out their deepest loves and fears, transforming them into concrete forms--Phi creatures (Field 337). Within a few hours of his arrival, Kelvin himself is visited by his own mysterious and frightening Phi-creature--Rheya. For the remainder of the book, the three men are kept off-balance and bordering on madness. Physically hampered and emotionally isolated, they must also run the space station alone because, most likely as a security measure, the robots have been neutralized, locked up in the storage area. Likewise, Norman Johnson is a professor of psychology at the University of California in San Diego; his specialty is group dynamics and anxiety (13). In addition, he is an FAA crashsite expert who is responsible for dealing with the `acute problems' of passengers who survive airplane crashes. Typically, he helps them cope with `feelings,' `fears,' `guilt,' `anxiety,' and `recurring nightmares' (11). In Sphere he is called upon to investigate a mysterious gargantuan spacecraft on the bottom of the ocean. As a result of a report he prepared regarding alien in 1979 for the National Security Council, Norman is commadeered to serve as one of the four members of an elite task force assigned to establish contact with suspected forms, unknown extraterrestrial creatures (15). Following their initial search of the spacecraft, the civilian experts conclude that the vessel had arrived the future, had crashed on the floor of the South Pacific three hundred to a thousand years earlier, and had been built by the United States in the year 2043. Moreover, it currently houses an life form that they dub the sphere. …

Topic: Jungian Analytical Psychology
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences