The Red chairs

The Red Chairs: A Stream of Synchronicity

​On a warm winter’s day, with a light rain falling instead of snow, I was struck by a surprise of bright red chairs strewn across a little stream flowing into Lake Zurich in Switzerland. I still don’t know anything about the red chairs. Why were they there? Who had placed them? Were they part of an art installation or remnants of the previous night’s party? The rain let up. A silver sky reflected off the water. Chimney smoke rose from homes on the far shore, dotted with public parks and private houses. A walking path meandered through them. I was on a solo journey to Küsnacht. The hometown of Carl Jung that means kiss night in English. I had been enchanted by photos of Jung’s house lining the walls of Pacifica Graduate Institute; a baby blue tiled stove, a library with a ladder, and an old man smoking a pipe. Visiting the CG Jung House Museum felt like a pilgrimage.  The synchronicity of image and geography and time was deeply striking.
 
I was standing in Carl Jung’s foyer when my phone buzzed – an email notice from the California Board of Behavioral Sciences that my hours toward licensure as a marriage and family therapist had been validated. I had been validated. The validation at Carl Jung’s house followed shortly by the surprise of the red chairs is still working its way through my psyche. Of course, it was Psyche that led me to the chairs. Red chairs, a bold color. The title color of Jung’s most infamous and prophetic book, The Red Book. It was a truly stunning visual image to encounter, one whose meaning continues to unravel and deepen.
 
With the buzzing validation, I was approved to take my licensure test, the final step of my five-year journey to become a licensed psychotherapist. After touring Jung’s house, I attempted to walk back to Zurich, an hour or so by foot. Stumbling upon the synchronistic surprise of the red chairs, I snapped a few photos on my iPhone. I got closer to the shore, curious about the meanings of the chairs and the events that were unfolding in my life. I watched in awe as the end of the storm clouds rolled above and swans waddled beneath the chairs. Deeply symbolic and full of memory, it was one of the most meaningful synchronicities of my life. Carl Jung describes synchronicity as:   
 
“Synchronicity is the coming together of inner and outer events in a way that cannot be explained by cause and effect and that is meaningful to the observer.”
 
Standing in Carl Jung’s foyer in Switzerland, phone buzzing with validation from California, many events folded into one. The origami of my life finally turning into a strong, beautiful bird ready to take flight. Many of that day’s beginnings were deeply rooted in shared pasts. Perhaps that’s the best way an experience of timelessness can be written, beginnings and endings unraveling synchronistically, old and new and now and eternal. In the connection of people in places across time, a little flare of the unknown makes itself known.
 
The chair has a long and storied history in psychotherapy and the pop culture lore surrounding it. In early psychoanalysis, usually carried out by psychiatrists (Jung) or neurologists (Freud) the patient or analysand would be seated in a chair with the doctor or analyst standing behind them. On the website Simply Psychology, Saul McLeod, PhD writes,
 
Traditionally, during psychoanalytic sessions, the patient lies on a couch with the analyst seated just behind and out of the patient’s line of vision. This setup is believed to facilitate free association, allowing the patient to speak freely without the immediate reaction or perceived judgment from the therapist. The absence of face-to-face interaction is thought to help patients project their feelings and transferences more easily.
 
Here sit the foundations of the work in Depth psychology and as a psychodynamic therapist: projection and transference. Of projection, Jung says,

“Projection is one of the commonest psychic phenomena…Everything that is unconscious in ourselves we discover in our neighbor, and we treat him accordingly.”
 
The therapist serves both as holder of projections for their client and aids clients in becoming aware of the projections clients are emitting. If you have ever wondered why some people get under your skin, there’s a good chance a projection is occurring. The way we feel about others often opens a door through which we may came to understand some of our deepest unconscious material. One of the ways we recognize projections is through the process of transference and countertransference. Most efficiently summarized as the feelings clients and therapists project onto each other. Of transference, Jung says:

"The transference phenomenon is without doubt one of the most important syndromes in the process of individuation; its wealth of meanings goes far beyond mere personal likes and dislikes. By virtue of its collective contents and symbols it transcends the individual personality and extends into the social sphere, reminding us of those higher human relationships which are so painfully absent in our present social order, or rather disorder."


Jung was the first to move the chair. He shifted the clinical positions so that doctor and patient would face each other. Through this new seating arrangement Jung enlivened the therapeutic field. In some cases, he even got rid of the chair all together. He often spent hours walking with his patients.
 
In the 1940’s and 50’s Laura and Fitz Perls brought the chair back but left it empty with Gestalt therapy. Psychology Today describes Gestalt as:
The term “gestalt” is derived from a German word that means “whole” or “put together.” Gestalt therapy was developed in the 1940s and 1950s by Fritz Perls, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and his then-wife, psychotherapist Laura Perls, as an alternative to traditional, verbally-focused psychoanalysis. Their foundational premise is that people are best thought of as whole entities consisting of body, mind, and emotions, and best understood when viewed through their own eyes.
 
A traditional techniques of Gestalt therapy is the empty chair exercise. In which a chair is left empty in the treatment room to invite a person, feeling, or experience into the therapeutic space. It is an opportunity for clients to feel into the moment, allow for emotions to arise, and say the unspoken things they need to say. It has also become quite a popular trope in therapy memes.
 
I loved the composition of those mysterious chairs – two off to the side together like therapist and client, a small group like a little family session, and a larger circle like group therapy.  Two gulls in flight above. Two swans walking below. And no one to be found, as if everyone had risen and returned to the world. This is my wish for psychotherapy. That we get out of our chairs and off our couches, that we prioritize community care with self-care. Let our healing transcend the individual and liberate our families, our communities, and our planet.