Abstract

The purpose of this dissertation was to conduct a theoretical exploratory study and comparison of the Gestalt unification process with perceived similar processes in the practices of the Patanjali Yoga Sutras and the stages in the Hegelian dialectical development of mind and experience. The assumption was made that establishing a similarity would contribute support to an attributed lack in the theoretical structure of Gestalt theory and Gestalt therapy. The major concept explored was the process and dynamics involved in unification of opposing phenomena and the resulting insightful transcendence to a new reality in the experiential world of individuals. Specific concepts explored within that major concept were oppositions or polarities, unification, and insightful transcendence. ;The research method was descriptive and involved a systematic exposition and qualitative syntheses of descriptive written materials. Research materials were the writings of Fritz Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy, translations and interpretations of the Patanjali Yoga Sutras, and translations of Hegel's Phenomenology of the Mind. ;The results of this study provide support for the theoretical structure of Gestalt theory and therapy. The conceptual bases of the unification process in the Yoga Sutras, Hegelian dialectic, and Gestalt theory and therapy are similar. The processes and dynamics of all three systems involve a keen and sensitive experiential presentness of awareness, a focus on and unification of oppositions, and a transcendence to new reality. ;The results of a more precise analysis of the specific dynamics and essence of the resulting unification and transcendence have contributed further to Gestalt theory and therapy by providing deeper understanding and support for its conceptual use in the Gestalt theory of therapy, speculative implications about the psychotherapeutic dynamics associated with the "experience of memory" and the construction and/or de-struction of "meaning", and further clarification and theoretical significance of fundamental Gestalt concepts of here and now presentness, responsibility, awareness continuum, organismic self-regulation, and anti-intellectualism