Fritz Perls used the term "shuttling" for the procedure of consciously and intentionally asking a person to move his or her attention back and forth between two (or more) different figures. The term is actually a low-level abstraction that refers to a variety of different maneuvers that have in common the shifting of attention between two different but related items.
For example, someone who feels "stuck" in an unsatisfying situation, attitude, or state of mind might be asked, "Please close your eyes now, and in your imagination allow yourself to go to a place where you find what's missing for you in your present. Let me know when you have a clear picture of it." . . . "Now describe where you are and tell me what's going on there. . . ." This often leads to the identification of an internal "voice" that speaks on behalf of the quality that is missing in the the present, and then to a dialogue between that voice and another that speaks for "stuckness" in the unsatisfying situation, or unsatisfying mental and emotional state.
At first glance, shuttling appears to be one side of a polarity in which the other side involved staying-with and going-more-deeply-into a particular present feeling or experience. The obvious question involves when "staying with" and "going deeply into" is most appropriate, and when shuttling is more likely to be productive.
A general rule of thumb is this: When someone has scratched the surface of his or her awareness of some thought, feeling, or behavioral tendency, then "staying with" and "going deeply into" is called for. When he or she has come to a clear and full awareness of a feeling, quality, or phenomenon such as a dream element, then finding its connections with other aspects of the personality or life-situation may be useful. But even that principle has its caveats: For example, following his principle of "working with the obvious," Perls paid great attention to gestures and body language. So when someone articulated a feeling in a tentative way, he often said, "Keep making those gestures with your hand and let your hand speak. What does it say?" In this case, shuttling from attending to the verbal statement of a feeling to attending to the verbal expression of a physical movement can lead to a deeper, fuller awareness of the feeling and its associated ideation. Giving a voice to a hand held up in a "stop" gesture might lead a client to say, "Yes, stop! Don't come any closer! Stay back! Get away! Every time you get close to me, you stick your emotional knife in and twist and I don't know how to escape!" And then the work continues from that point.
Another answer to the question of whether "staying with" or "shuttling" is most appropriate is that the principle described in the paragraph above is not one hundred percent foolproof. It is also important to to stay in touch with your intuition about what's happening, and to pay attention to whether the person's reaction to what you do leads in a more productive or less productive direction. It's important not to overuse "shuttling" (or other methods), but to use it in a way that is not intrusive and that is sensitive to the present moment and the movement of the client's experience.
Let's briefly survey a number of different ways in which shuttling can occur. Two have already been mentioned: Shuttling attention from an unsatisfying present to an imagined situation that contains what's missing now, and shuttling attention from verbal to physical expression of a feeling. Other possibilities include shuttling:
--From a scene or element in a dream to a present or past existential situation in the person's life. For example, a woman who who dreamed of a dark figure in a basement was asked, "Does this person resemble anyone in your life?" She replied, after some hesitation, "Yes, my uncle who molested me when I was a girl."
--From a present existential dilemma to a time in the past where the client learned the pattern that is maladaptive in the present. A man who can't say "no" and lets others walk all over him is asked, "Was there anywhere in your childhood where you couldn't say "no?" It turns out that his father beat him with a belt and belittled him mercilessly when he showed any signs of independence.
--From feelings toward one person in a life-situation to feelings toward another who is also involved in it. A woman who has fully expressed her fear and helplessness toward an abusive father may then be asked, "Where was Mom in all this?" Then the woman turns to her mother in another empty chair and wails, "You saw all that. Why didn't you protect me?"
--From one side of a dialogue to another. The dialogue may be with another person or between two sides of oneself that are in conflict. When a person seems stuck in one side of a dialogue, often it's useful to change to the other side. Sometimes in the latter stages of a dialogue, when each side of the polarity or interpersonal situation have been deeply explored, fast shuttling can be useful. "Now please move back and forth between the two chairs on your own, with just one sentence from each place each time." This can clarify the bare essentials of an unresolved conflict or can assist integration of the two sides of the polarity.
--Between one dialogue and another. In a conflict about whether to remain in a relationship, we might shuttle from an "external" dialogue with the partner to an "internal" dialogue between the parts of the self that are in conflict. So we might move from, "Talk to your boyfriend in the other chair," to "Where you're sitting, be the side of yourself that wants to stay in the relationship, and in the other chair, be the side that wants to leave." Or the order of these two dialogues may be reversed, depending on the manner in which the session evolves, so that the internal dialogue occurs first, and the dialogue with the boyfriend follows.
--From one feeling to another when a person has two or more conflicting feelings in a situation. Recently I asked a woman who had three conflicting feelings toward her terminally ill mother to put each of them in a separate chair and shuttle among them, on her own, as each rose to the surface. This was an experiment that worked marvelously. After that we brought her two sisters into the situation and she shuttled among dialogues with each. That was an instance of the "shuttling from feelings toward one person in a life-situation to feelings toward another who is also involved in" it described above.
--From exaggeration of a physical expression to stopping the exaggeration or doing the opposite (whatever that happens to be). For example, a person might be asked to exaggerate muscular tension in jaws, throat, shoulders, or wherever else the tension is being held, and then relax that exaggeration.
--From one place in the body to another. A woman who had identified a knot in her stomach was also tightly pursing her lips. She was asked to become her lips and tell her stomach what she was afraid would happen if she let its message come out. Then she identified with her stomach and replied to her lips, and continued back and forth in that manner.
--From one expressive modality to another. Shifting from thought expresssed in words to physical action expressed in words was described above. It can also be useful to shuttle between a thought and a feeling, between a thought or feeling and a sensation, or between a sensation and an action. An example of the last of these is, "Now take that sluggish, heavy sensation and get up and walk in a way that expresses it."
This list is probably long enough. If another kind of shuttling not mentioned above intuitively feels appropriate in a working session try it. If it works, stay with it. If not, let go of it and notice what emerges next.
In short, in Naranjo's useful classification, shuttling can serve as an "expressive technique" to discover or become more aware of a little-known part of the self early in a working session. It can serve as a "suppressive technique" to distract attention from an entrenched automatic habit, in order to allow a different, more spontaneous and creative way of responding to emerge. Shuttling in that manner is likely to be useful when a person sounds like they're playing the same old song over and over. Later in a session, shuttling can function as an "integrative technique" to draw more fully on a previously neglected dimension of the self and bring different sides of oneself into better contact and communication with each other. In the sense described in this paragraph, shuttling is a "multicolored" method of exploration and discovery.
REFERENCES
Baumgartner, Patricia and F. Perls. (1975) Gifts from Lake Cowichan / Legacy from Fritz. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books.
Naranjo, Claudio. Gestalt Therapy: The Attitude and Practice of an Atheoretical Experientialism. Nevada City, CA: Gateways/IDHHB Publishing.
THE WORKING CORNER is devoted to sharing and discussing specific aspects of the Gestalt working process, including both method and theory. If you've developed a useful addition to Gestalt practice that you'd like to share, know of an old technique or idea that's not well known, or have unique insights into working with a particular situation or population, we'd like to hear about it, so please e-mail it to us. If it fits, we'll print it, giving you full credit, authorship, or co-authorship as appropriate.
e-mail: victor.daniels@sonoma.edu
Victor Daniels is Professor of Psychology at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California 94928