I hope I made it clear that I have only praise for Control Mastery therapists such as you and every other CM therapist whose work I have come to know about. I have no criticism to make, either, of any theoretical concept CMT uses in describing the therapeutic process. So what could I possibly be complaining about?
The wisest thing Control Mastery does is focus on a patient's goals. CM therapists take a very wide view when they do so, becoming aware not only of the tactical goals the patient pursues day to day, but the strategic goals, too, the goals relating to the general direction the patient is seeking to take his life.
I think that's terrific; I think that's exactly what's needed. Unfortunately CMT is a tactical theory only. It is not really systematic in describing strategic developmental issues. It focuses only on the proximate effects of pathogenic beliefs, and as such doesn't accurately reflect the broad perspective that its therapists have and need to help their patients on an overall basis.
In a sense, who cares, because CM therapists are trained to be empathetic from a strategic point of view and therefore get along quite well without systematic utterances put down in a book. One problem arises, however, when the CM therapist seeks to describe the therapeutic process in a professional publication. Official CMT is inadequate to the task, yet that is the only language the therapist has. So what one gets is a delimited discussion that comes off as not being fully credible, precisely because it is so narrow in its focus. Of course, the therapist knows that he or she dealt with more than just that and so attempts to bring up other matters of a more strategic nature as well. But because of the need to phrase the main body of the report in the inadequate language of official CMT, what could be a well-rounded discussion becomes a disjointed one, with the strategic discussion taking on the aspect of a set of ancillary facts. Your published paper may be an exception. If it is, I apologize, but I have not seen anything in other publications to make be a believer in exceptions.
The other problem is scientific. The pathogenic beliefs CMT focuses upon operate within the context of other developmental realities, realities that its therapists deal with everyday. That being the case, it just seems reasonable to me that research be conducted to systematically study the interactions between all of these realities so that a more adequate official theory and vocabulary can be developed. CMT was needed because of important psychological realities Freud virtually ignored. It would be sad if another theory had to be developed using as its starting place what CMT can't be made to officially recognize. What would be particularly sad, I believe, is that CMT would not need to develop a single new concept to achieve such a broadened perspective. You therapists have it all now. You use it intuitively everyday.
The first step toward a broadened theory would be for someone to sit down and systematically relate what you therapists now use and know. This initial theorizing need not take place in a vacuum, because of all of the video taping you have been doing. There are incredible riches there that could serve as a basis for making CMT the most solidly grounded psychological theory on the planet. I really believe that. I despair of that possibility, however, because I have not yet been able to get anyone associated with Control Mastery to even admit that there might be a problem.