Abstract

This dissertation presents an existential-phenomenological investigation into the experience of integrity. Six co-researchers, three women and three men, were engaged in two in-depth interviews exploring their response to the question, "Can you tell me about a time or an experience in your life when you felt a deep sense of personal integrity?" Interviews were tape recorded and transcripts explicated by the researcher and by a team of phenomenologists using both a hermeneutical interpretive reading of the texts and Husserl's method of free phantasy variation. ;The concept of integrity is investigated etymologically and through a review of the literature of the disciplines of philosophy--Western and Eastern, psychology and systems science. The experience of integrity is made sense of and presented in two parts: the emerging dynamics and the essential meaning-structure. The research reveals that an experience of integrity emerges when one's life is experienced as "not right." This uneasiness develops into a deep inner conflict, a "dark night" that entails a searching through and clarification of one's deepest values. With the acknowledgment and commitment to one's newly revealed "truth," there is both gain and loss. A sense of inner coherence and wholeness is experienced as further action is taken and as a result, one's life is radically changed. An experience of integrity is profoundly felt and deeply moving and tends to endure as a foundation for further such experiences in life