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(More customer reviews)Patrician Evans has developed a wonderful and plausible theory as to why certain people are compelled to control others.
All people have four internal functions available to them to use as internal guidance: their ability to think, their emotions, their physical sensations and their intuition.
Controlling people (CPs) have suffered some kind of emotional or physical trauma as children or adults that has caused them, as a defense, to shut down one or more of the first three functions. Oftentimes, the only function they use is their thinking function. This leaves them feeling empty inside. And it's a tough way to live.
For this reason, they are attracted to "four functioning" people. Once they feel secure with another person, they project their idea of a perfect person into the other person. The don't see the person for who she/he really is.
People can tell when they're in the presence of a CP because they will be defined by the CP (for example, "you're not hungry!") as if the CP can know another person's internal reality. They will not be listened to, the conversation will frequently make no sense and the CP will most likely be verbally abusive.
CPs see others much as children see their teddy bears: the perfect friend who knows exactly what the CP is thinking, who never talks backs or disagrees and who has no separate needs of their own.
CPs build their sense of sense of self from the outside in--not the inside out as is normal. Their personalities are constructs created by themselves to win the love and admiration they seek. They don't come from a place of deep authenticity. They have no sense of themselves. They need to anchor inside another person. Without that anchor in another, they feel lost and adrift, almost as if they are going to die. That's why the compulsion to control is so strong. That's why their reaction to someone who disagrees with them, or who in anyway doesn't fulfill the teddy bear role, can be so extreme and viscious.
The horrible irony for the CP is that their behavior pushes away the love and connection they so desperately need.
The horrible reality for victims of CPs is that they blame themselves, think they are crazy, constantly try to explain themselves to no avail, and think that if they just try harder, all will be well. But it never is.
There's one downside to this book. Ms. Evans spends hundreds of pages, in a lovely, unique writing style, explaining and supporting her theory of why people, and whole groups, are controlling. But she gives only one piece of advice for dealing with a CP, which is to say, "What?" every time they make one of their nonsensical statements or try to define another. I wish she had spent more time on strategies for dealing with CPs. Just saying "what" seems inadequate.
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