Coping With Control and Manipulation: Making the Difference Between Being a Target and Becoming a Victim

Manipulation comes in many forms. Parents routinely manipulate children with the best of intentions. Romantic partners manipulate each other, as do friends. Bosses manipulate workers---and vice versa---while the advertising industry manipulates us all. Resistance begins with an awareness of manipulators' motives and techniques, and of strategies for self-preservation.

Who is pushing your buttons---and what can you do about it? Coping with Control and Manipulation: Making the Difference Between Being a Target and Becoming a Victim examines the various spheres in which people encounter control and manipulation and shows how avoiding such victimization is absolutely possible. Knowing the players, understanding what motivates them, identifying their goals, and learning the techniques they use can help potential victims avoid, or at least survive, control and manipulation attempts.

In her comprehensive look at this potentially harmful human drive, clinical psychologist Vera Sonja Maass shows just how prevalent control and manipulation are. She examines manipulator's goals and techniques as they relate to personality structure and offers a "menu" of techniques commonly used to exercise control. Arming readers through an in-depth analysis of controllers' behaviors toward targeted persons, Dr. Maass enables such targets to predict future actions---and prepare responses that will prevent victimization.