Gestalt therapy, Dialogical Self Theory, and the “empty chair”

If for classical psychoanalysis the couch was the outstanding symbol, the “empty chair” was the prominent icon for classical Gestalt therapy, by which it became both famous and infamous in the 1960s and early 1970s. Frederick S. Perls had borrowed the various techniques that he implemented by the use of a chair from Jacob Moreno (1964; see also Zerka Moreno, 1965). Perls, however, did not base his application of these techniques on Moreno’s theory; he worked with them without linking them to any particular theoretical background.