Connections and Confirmations

• Survivor Guilt, Submissive Behavior, and Evolutionary Theory by Lynn E. O'Connor and Jack W. Berry and Joseph Weiss, 5/25/97
  
  

Its quite amazing to me as I delve into other areas of research interest how much Control-Mastery theory is at the crossroads of so many new ways of thinking about therapy, psychotherapeutic change, cognition, etc.

Current treatment approaches to Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) read like Control-Mastery primers; work on establishing safety in treatment of abuse survivors (of course, a related area of inquiry) often uses techniques and theoretical approaches outlined years prior in the work of Weiss and Sampson; cognitive science approaches to the study of information processing, acquisition and retrieval confirm CMT emphases on the development of pathogenic beliefs and their importance in the organizing of mental life; treatment of addiction diseases and mood disorders in particular seems to be moving more and more toward CMT-like approaches (which are being confirmed by empirical research).

While I am not putting myself in the position of touting Control-Mastery theory as the final word in cognitive-interpersonal approaches to the study of psychopathology, it remains clear (and vital) to me that there is something extremely powerful in the somewhat radical notions that human beings are powerfully adaptive creatures, oriented by altruistic motive-systems constructed and maintained by affect detection and processing systems geared towards a recognition of our fundamental relatedness with others. While Control-Mastery theory is not the first (and won't be the last) to emphasize (borrowing from Mal Slavin and Daniel Kriegman) "the adaptive design of the human psyche," it remains a powerful, and highly relevant entry point for thinking about psychopathology and psychotherapy. Once one reads some of the Control-Mastery literature, one begins to see similar and identical concepts throughout the psychological literature (and often touted as brand new ideas, without reference to Weiss and Sampson's early work). Collaboration and giving credit where credit is due seem laudable, but unfortunately, psychology seems to be among the more ahistorical of the human sciences.

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