Steve Andreas > Books Authored > Six Blind Elephants > Chapter 7

Shift roles: “other”

In any conflict or disagreement, the people involved will be attending and responding to a situation in very different ways. People often say something like, “I wish you could see this the way I do,” or “Can’t you put yourself in her shoes?” indicating that it is possible to see and respond to a situation from a different point of view. The old adage to “walk a mile in someone’s shoes before judging them” is an attempt to get someone to experience the different scope that someone else experiences. Sometimes this is described in much more general terms, such as, “seeing things in a balanced way,” or “respecting others’ views.”

When you take “other” position, you first dissociate from your own position, and then associate into the position of someone else in the event. This is a very different scope—especially for people who almost always operate out of self position. Taking “other” position in an event often provides additional information about someone else’s views and feelings. This is helpful in understanding a situation more fully, and may lead to categorizing it in a new and more useful way, what is often called empathy or compassion.

In Gestalt Therapy, a method called “the empty chair” is used to resolve conflicts. A client imagines putting a parent, spouse, a physical symptom, or a frightening element from a dream in an empty chair, and then talks to it as if it were a person. After a few sentences they are instructed to sit in the empty chair and respond to what they just said, which places them in “other” position. This dialogue continues until there is some integration of the opposing positions. In the process, clients realize that what they think of as conflicts between themselves and someone else are actually conflicts between different parts of themselves. After all, the other person is not actually here, and there is nothing in the empty chair. This is a change of scope that results in “reowning” dissociated parts of themselves, and taking responsibility for what they have been blaming others for.

Ghandi took on “other” position throughout his life; once when one of his sandals dropped onto the tracks as a train left the station, he immediately took off his remaining sandal and threw it so that it landed near the first one, so that whoever found them would have a useful pair. He also used “other” position in his struggles for Indian independence against the British. He repeatedly imitated the posture and movements of the British governors to find out what their experience was like, in order to understand it better and utilize it toward his goal of independence.

People who hate, or are prejudiced in any way (and all of us have some of this) can get a much more balanced view by taking “other” position to experience someone else’s “reality” in any difference or dispute. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to get very prejudiced people to do this, because they are so certain that they are right. They also usually use an inhuman stereotype to represent the target of their prejudice, making it much less likely that they would be willing to try empathizing with someone in that group.