ABSTRACT
A well-known but often abused or misunderstood gestalt experiment is ‘the empty chair’. Pioneered by Fritz Perls, himself influenced by the psycho-dramatist Jacob Moreno (1889–1974), it was a radical move from his psychoanalytic past. The technique externalises internalised conflicts and brings issues from the past into the here and now of the therapy room. The empty chair technique can be used in many different ways, ‘to complete unfinished business, integrate disparate parts or polarised qualities in the person and bring archaic influences into the here and now’ (Mann, 2014: 194). Any of the following might be placed on the empty chair: a significant other person from the client’s life (past or present), a quality the client may disown, an organisation, a split in the client, a dilemma, a life choice, to re-own disowned qualities to name a few possibilities. What is critical when moving to suggest such an experiment is that the relational groundwork between client and therapist has been built sufficiently and that it emerges dialogically and phenomenologically rather than being pre-configured by the therapist. The client is invited to dialogue with whoever or whatever is placed on the empty chair and if appropriate may physically change places with the person/organisation/quality and respond to their original position. As discussed in the last point two-chair work or empty chair work can lend itself to a dialogue with a topdog/underdog dichotomy or polarities in the person.
