Single-session chairwork: overview and case illustration of brief dialogical psychotherapy

ABSTRACT

Single session therapy (SST) is an increasingly popular approach to mental health treatment that aims to address clients’ presenting difficulties in a single appointment. However, experiential approaches to SST are limited. In this paper I describe the theory and practice of “chairwork” – an integrative, action-focused method of intervention centred on the concept of self-multiplicity – and outline how these procedures can be coherently applied in a single-session format. A preliminary protocol for delivering single-session chairwork (SSC) or “brief dialogical psychotherapy” is presented, alongside a case illustration that demonstrates features of this approach. Finally, directions for future research and the continued development of chairwork as a psychotherapeutic modality are considered.

KEYWORDS:

• Chairwork
• integrative psychotherapy
• role-play
• single session therapy

Acknowledgements

The author receives royalties from a textbook related to the topic of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data presented in this paper (verbatim extracts and post-intervention feedback relating to the case study) cannot be shared in the interests of confidentiality and anonymity.

Notes

1 For more comprehensive reviews of chairwork-related outcome studies, see Elliott et al. (2004) and Pugh (in press).

2 It is worth noting that strengthening a single, superordinate I-position represents just one of several transformations, although this is the focus for many psychotherapies. For a thorough critique of this “single self assumption”, see Fadiman and Gruber (2020).

3 SSC intake forms can be accessed on the following webpage: www.chairwork.co.uk/single-session-chairwork.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Matthew Pugh

Matthew Pugh is a Clinical Psychologist, Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist, Advanced Schema Therapist, Voice Dialogue Facilitator, researcher, and chairwork practitioner. He is employed as a Senior Clinical Psychologist (NHS) and Teaching Fellow (University College London), alongside working in private practice in the UK. He is the co-director of www.chairwork.co.uk and the author of “Cognitive Behavioural Chairwork: Distinctive Features” (Routledge). His interests relate to self-multiplicity and the applications of chairwork in psychotherapy and coaching.