ABSTRACT
My purpose in this chapter is to provide an overview of the control-mastery theory. All of the theory's concepts will be described and illustrated with brief examples so that a reader who is new to this approach can develop a sufficient familiarity with it to follow its application and understand its clinical implications, which are described in the subsequent chapters of this volume. In the interest of conciseness and clarity, I will not focus on the evolution of the control-mastery theory or how it relates to other theories. The interested reader is referred to Silberschatz, Curtis, Sampson, & Weiss (1991), Weiss, Sampson, and the Mount Zion Psychotherapy Research Group (1986), Weiss (1993), and to chapters 10 and 12 of this volume.
