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397 of 408 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What???, August 1, 2003
This review is from: Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal with People Who Try to Control You (Paperback)
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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145 of 150 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Patricia Evans has done it again, January 7, 2002
This review is from: Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal with People Who Try to Control You (Paperback)
As a psychotherapist in San Francisco, I am delighted to recommend this book to my clients. Evans has a gift for presenting profound insights in a simple and clear manner that everyone can both understand and employ. As in her other two books ("The Verbally Abusive Relationship" and "Verbal Abuse Survivors Speak Out"), she identifies and explains a problem that is right under our noses. Evans helps the reader learn how to break free from someone who is pretending to know how he/she thinks and feels. And, rather than demonizing controllers, she explains with compassion their desparate need to connect and to experience closeness. It is quite possible that at least some people who try to control us are simply unskilled in how to connect in which case this book is a powerful educational tool. And, in helping one escape the backward connecting attempts of controllers, the book guides controllers with deeper psychological problems toward getting the professional help they need. In either case, Evans encourages us to insist on being seen authentically, i.e. as one reveals him/herself to another, not as the "pretend self" controllers try to impose on us. This book is for anyone who wants to live with their eyes open. As in her other writings, Evans has given us a book about clarity and freedom.
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109 of 114 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A New Clarity, Breakthrough in Understanding!, October 12, 2002
This review is from: Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal with People Who Try to Control You (Paperback)
Clarity! This book is awesome. It offers understanding where no one else does. I truly believe it is new groundbreaking insight into the world of the Controlling Person. I say this with confidence because I, like the reviewer "Alliasus" here, have also read stacks and stacks of psychology and self help books in all-out effort to understand my Controlling Person husband of 18 years. En route, I gained lots of helpful insight, but, NO insight, at all, as to why he is the way he is. On this basis I can say I don't believe this information existed until Patricia Evans wrote this book. I think this is all-new insight, and counselors and lay people alike really need to read it! I think when people begin to discover this book there will be no stopping it. Because there are legion of us out here who live in relationships that make no sense. Our partners act awful and senselessly, but yet, we know in our hearts they are not evil at heart, and our hope in humankind says there must be some sense to this? Well, there is. Patricia Evans finally makes sense of it in this book. What a relief, to have the pressing mystery solved. When you are a woman and this is your marriage, the mystery rather takes over your whole life. It is a major epiphany to finally get the light of understanding. Therefore, I understand exactly why yet another well-read reviewer here says that this book is second only to the Bible. I know just what she means. The Bible is the most important book in my life too. I know I will always have this book (Controlling People) right up there on my list of most important books I have ever read in my life. Bible-Lovers: this doesn't mean Patricia Evans has Bible quotes in here. There are none. But, she speaks truth in this book, and you will recognize truth when you see it. What a disservice the editorial reviewer, Susan E. Burdick, has done here at the top of this review page - telling librarians through the Library Review magazine that this book belongs in the hands of lay counselors. No way, Ms. Burdick! As the readers here attest, this is Every Person's book. Evans writes extremely clearly, and her unique style is absolutely engaging. Ms. Burdick makes quite a pressumption, an ignorant one, when she says "lay readers who feel controlled will find this a hard read." On the contrary, those of us involved in controlling relationships will not be able to put this book down, and will want to start back in the beginning and read it a 2nd and 3rd time. I shudder to think what kind of impact Burdick's review might have. Will her influence discourage some librarians from ordering this book, keeping it out of the hands of the many persons in every town, no matter how small, who need this book? What a shame. I hope another Editorial Reviewer will review this. I do not expect Burdick to get a second on this one.
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