Empty chair work and its use in psychotherapy

Abstract

This article seeks to advance our understanding of empty chair work as a therapeutic procedure. What does the empty chair represent and more importantly what is in the empty chair when used in psychotherapy? This article seeks to answer this question. There are also many ways of doing the psychological process of empty chair work without having an actual chair in front of the client. And a multitude of objects and people can be put into the chair. Also a variety of therapeutic uses of the empty chair are described.

Keywords

• transaction analysis
• psychoterapy
• ego states
• gestalt