dUnfortunately, there are many who know Gestalt Therapy only through the hackneyed expression of the “here and now” and the “empty chair technique”, a reductionist vision that undervalues a serious and transcendent current of psychotherapy that some believe to be in. conditions to apply after attending a couple of informative seminars lasting just one weekend.
Another of the frequent errors (and also a new reductionist cliché) is to automatically relate Gestalt Therapy with the well-known one formulated by Fritz Perls in a very specific sociocultural context, such as that of American society in the sixties, and which little or It has nothing to do with the evolution that humanistic psychotherapy has experienced, which is practiced well into the 21st century.
Thus, as an introduction to this article, the question arises as to whether the “empty chair” technique has—or only had—its sociocultural context, and whether it is reasonable to consider it as an identifying, paradigmatic, and even homologous element to such a humanist current. as broad as Gestalt Therapy.
Let’s go step by step and start where we usually start when we want to make something clear, in this case, delving into the origins of the empty chair technique and how Perls incorporated it into Gestalt.
Origins of the empty chair technique
The origin of the empty chair technique comes from the psychodrama of , born in Bucharest into a Sephardic Jewish family that later emigrated to Vienna where the young Levy studied Medicine (specializing in Psychiatry) along with those in Mathematics and Philosophy.
If you value articles like this, consider supporting us by becoming a Pro subscriber. Subscribers enjoy access to members-only articles, materials, and webinars.
Moreno is best known for being the creator of psychodrama, a form of psychotherapy initially conceived as group therapy (he was also the one who coined the term “group therapy”) inspired by improvisation theater.
As a therapeutic method, psychodrama consists of the patient’s representation or dramatization of past or future events, real or imaginary, external or internal, experiencing them to the maximum, as if they were happening in the present. In these performances, various dramatic techniques are used – guided by certain principles and rules – with certain objectives: realizing one’s own thoughts, feelings, motivations, behaviors and relationships, improving understanding of situations, etc.
Historically, psychodrama represents the decisive point in the departure from the treatment of the isolated individual towards the treatment of the individual in groups, from the treatment of the individual with verbal methods towards the treatment with action methods.
Psychodrama puts the patient on a stage, where he can solve his problems with the help of a few therapeutic actors.
JL Moreno
Several therapeutic models have adopted this methodology because it is a very projective and impactful technique on a symbolic level.
Introduction to the empty chair technique
In addition to the usual chairs intended for the therapist and the patient, in this technique a third chair enters the scene that no one occupies (the empty chair), and during the session the patient is encouraged to imagine that it is occupied by “someone.” to whom you must address as if they were really there. He will be able to sit in the chair both living and dead people, from the present or the past, and even characters who only exist in his dreams.
The participant imaginatively projects onto the empty chair a part of his personality, an absent person, a feeling or a specific situation with which he has a conflict, thus beginning a dialogue. Next, the patient, following the therapist’s instructions, will occupy the empty chair, thus changing roles. That is, a dialogue is established at the expense of changing chairs and changing roles.
According to supporters of this technique, this confrontation allows the patient to confront both current and past conflicts. The intention may be, for example, to verbalize in front of the empty chair something that he could not say in childhood (due to repression, fear or any other reason), thus creating a decisive “cathartic effect.”
Let us consider that it is also possible to place in the chair not only people but also certain personality traits not recognized as their own by the patient, in order to make them aware and be able to confront them. And also sit in the chair in situations that involve a conflict, with the intention of dramatizing a scene that frequently occurs in everyday life, and being able to contemplate it from “outside” with an objectivity that helps solve the problem.
It is possible to place in the chair not only people but also certain personality traits not recognized as their own by the patient, in order to make them aware and be able to confront them.
Finally, on occasions, the therapist will urge the patient to, with an effort of imagination, transform a situation that he has experienced and assess how things could have been if he had reacted in a different way.
To summarize: the empty chair is intended to be an instrument through which the patient can stage a series of roles to project themselves and achieve cathartic effects.
Origins of the empty chair technique in Gestalt
In order not to be repetitive with the history of Gestalt Therapy (already covered in many previous works), I will directly take a brief tour through the works of Fritz Perls in order to locate in time both the when, the how and the why your decision to incorporate the empty chair technique.
The intention of this bibliographical tour is merely indicative to understand the metamorphosis experienced in the mind, the criteria, the ideology, and in short in the complex personality of a figure like Fritz Perls who, like Sigmund Freud and so many others, has his lights and its shadows.
I, hunger and aggression (1947)
In this work, Perls establishes the original ideas that formed the basis of the theory and practice of Gestalt Therapy.
It is a work halfway between the orthodox psychoanalysis prevailing at the time and the birth of Gestalt Therapy in 1951.
Perls proposed ideas as a revisionism to psychoanalysis, ideas that would form the foundations of Gestalt Therapy: oral resistances, the positive value of resistances, the continuum of consciousness, holism, and self-organismic regulation.
Although his wife at the time, Laura Perls, did not sign as co-author, she did actively participate in writing the text, supporting her husband professionally.
Gestalt therapy: excitement and growth of human personality (1951)
With the publication of Gestalt Therapy: Arousal and growth of human personalitywritten by Paul Goodman based on Perls’ handwritten notes, lays the theoretical foundations of Gestalt Therapy.
The main revolution of Gestalt Therapy was the transition from an individualistic thinking model coming from psychoanalysis, to a field paradigm, in which it was no longer the body-mind unit that laid the foundations for the concept of holism by also including the environment. . With this, the object of psychology and psychotherapy ceased to be the psyche or the subject and became “the experience” of the person that takes place in the field that constitutes an organism and its environment.
In 1964, Fritz Perls left the New York Institute and moved to California. With the personal development fad concentrating on the North American West Coast, Perls began to view Gestalt Therapy as a way of life rather than as a model of therapy. His first step was to join the Esalen Institute where he taught training courses in line with his new way of conceiving life.
This is how Perls’ Californian era begins, a biographical reference from which he abandoned individual therapy and became a supporter of group therapy.
Perls took a step back, renouncing his postulates and retreating again to intrapsychic individualism, something that his most intimate collaborators and co-founders of Gestalt Therapy did not share.
At this time, Perls carried out his professional activity through some striking and picturesque public workshops in Esalen in which he renounced the concepts of field and contact (introduced in Gestalt Therapy: Excitation and Growth of the Human Personality) and experimented a regression (in their way of working) as they evolve towards the intrapsychic sphere. That is to say, in the same way that at the time the innovation that Perls contributed was to move from the individualistic paradigm of psychoanalysis to a field paradigm, Perls took a step back, renouncing his postulates and retreating again to intrapsychic individualism, something that his followers did not share. most intimate collaborators and co-founders of Gestalt Therapy.
Anecdotally, the comment circulates that, just as for Freud, standing with his back to the patient helped him compensate for some of his fear of facing him, it was also speculated that Perls was so afraid of the relationship, and felt so much anguish in front of him. the we, that this was perhaps the reason that prompted him to write his famous gestalt prayer.
Isadore From referred to some of these brief Fritz workshops as “hit-and-run” therapies:
This is what Perls did in the last years of his life: he gave demonstrations, small snapshots of Gestalt Therapy. He did not do Gestalt Therapy: you cannot do therapy in 15 or 20 minutes!
It was this type of demonstration that Perls did at Esalen—spectacular and even circus-like—that even today contributes to the confusion of identifying Gestalt Therapy with cathartic and spectacular techniques and experiments. It is a serious error that I intend to deny by clarifying that, in any case, from the involutionary metamorphosis experienced by Fritz Perls in his Californian period, Gestalt Therapy split into two currents. One of them remained faithful to his origins and was made up of his wife Laura (from whom he ended up separating), Paul Goodman as well as the rest of the members belonging to the so-called group of seven. The other current was the one that Perls undertook in the hippy California of the sixties after renouncing not only the Field paradigm, but also the Theory of the Self and the theoretical substrate embodied in the reference work “Gestalt Therapy: excitation and growth of the human personality” (1951), colloquially known as the PHG after the initials of its creators: Perls, Hefferline and Goodman.
This turning point in the professional life of Fritz Perls marks the split of what, from then on, would be the two currents of Gestalt Therapy that still divide this discipline today: West Coast Atheoretical Gestalt and Theoretical Gestalt. Coast…