Eva de Hullu’s book “Alles onder Controle” (Everything Under Control) has been published by Boom in June 2025. It’s currently only available in Dutch but she’s working on a translation. You can listen to the Dutch Introduction.
The Invisible Force Behind All Our Behavior
Control is much more than managing your environment or controlling yourself: it’s the invisible force behind all our behavior. Yet psychology pays surprisingly little attention to it. Understanding the mechanism of control enables us to comprehend much more – about ourselves, about others, and about the world around us.
Experiencing What You Want to Experience
Control is everywhere. We are continuously busy arranging our lives so that we get what we need and experience what we want to experience. You wash your hands to feel clean. You read a book to relax or learn something. You greet your colleagues to maintain a good atmosphere. Those who experience control experience balance and resilience. You can handle a setback. Losing control is precisely what’s painful. When that happens, you try to solve the problem by doing something differently, or you restore balance by adjusting your goal. Everything Under Control discusses this steering mechanism from the perspective of perceptual control theory. In a control system, the current experience is continuously compared with the desired situation and action is taken to reduce the difference between the two. Based on this model, this book develops a complex interplay of control systems that clearly explains how we shape the world according to our wishes. And also why we often fail to do so.
Restoring Control: Method of Levels
Eva de Hullu builds up our understanding of control step by step and shows how we organize our inner and outer worlds based on our own wishes, desires, and goals. She also explains how you can help others when they have lost control: Method of Levels is a conversation technique that uses attention and curiosity to reorganize stuck goals, beliefs, and feelings. This way, internal steering is restored.
A Deeper Understanding of Psychology
Examples from daily life and practice help you to effectively shape your work as a care provider with deeper understanding. This makes Everything Under Control extremely suitable for psychologists, psychiatrists, and special education professionals (in training), but also for anyone who is curious about how human behavior can be understood from within.
