Empty Chair Technique

There is a form of psychoanalysis called Gestalt therapy. It aims to analyze personal responsibility of the client. It was developed by Laura and Fritz Perls, and Paul Goodman in the 1940s. It is considered to be a mighty experiential psychotherapy that focuses on knowingness or awareness and contact in the here and now. The therapy submits the client to come to conclusion and awareness about himself. The Gestalt therapist uses many ways to assist their clients to evaluate and analyze themselves. One such way is empty chair technique. It is also known as chair work and is described in detail in this article. Let's first learn about some fundamental facts on Gestalt therapy.

Gestalt Therapy: An Introduction

The term 'Gestalt' means a figure or a pattern that can be distinguished against a background. It is a type of psychotherapy which uses various ways involving a sum of the client's communicative abilities. The Gestalt therapist studies the whole presentation including how the client says, reacts, speaks, the words he chooses to speak and his body language throughout the session. A characteristic of Gestalt therapy is mindfulness. The client needs to be fully aware of his conscience and surroundings to pursue his relation with himself and others. This helps him to understand when and how the contact fails. The Gestalt therapist enlightens the client by his comments and observation. The therapist follows his client's ongoing process carefully and with special attention to analyze both the therapeutic relationship and his style of interrupting that process. The Gestalt therapist assists his client to work through as well as move beyond their dreadful emotional blocks

The Empty Chair Technique in Psychology

As is already mentioned, empty chair technique is one of the several ways of Gestalt therapy. In this technique, the therapist uses an empty chair to help increase his client's awareness of his own feelings and develop a stronger ability to cope with the daily living situations and difficulties. The Gestalt therapist asks his client to imagine a person sitting on an empty chair in his counseling room. This imaginary person is the one with whom his client has sexual, parental or friendly relationship and is having some sort of emotional issue. Sometimes, the imaginary person can be the client himself.

The client is asked to speak out on the subject of conflict. The Gestalt therapist focuses and studies many things for his evaluation and analysis. Some examples of such things are repeated significant statements, exaggerated gestures for clarification and the relationship between his client's verbal and non-verbal behavior. By analyzing the client's overall behavior during the counseling, the Gestalt therapist understands the root problem of the emotional issue. He helps his client by teaching him means of responding and coping that can be effective in his case. The aim of the Gestalt therapist is to make his client become aware of what they do, how they do it, and the way they can change themselves to face life as it is, in a better way. The result of a successful, empty chair technique, counseling is that the client learns to accept and value himself.

Empty chair technique is generally used with cases of interpersonal problems. A few examples are like a client feels too submissive, lonely, left-out, is angry at someone else, etc. The purpose of this counseling is to help the client to learn how to help himself. The client is empowered with the ability to self-heal. This is the reason that it has gained popularity with school children. The rate of success of this technique counseling is quite high.