"controlling idea" is a valid and usable phrase in written English and can be used in any context in which you are discussing a central concept or theme.
For example, a controlling idea in a book might be "the importance of family."
The controlling idea behind Goold's production is that this is as much a play about the triumph of sanity over madness as of virtue over vengeance.
Week 18: Theme and Meaning - Wednesday 10 February The unity of an episode depends on there being a clear theme and controlling idea.
Whatever the method is, the main controlling idea is to select a set of sections with higher safety risk.
It must include your topic and an opinion, or your controlling idea.
There are amusing moments and clever effects, but it lacks a large controlling idea of the sort that informed Eternal Sunshine.
The Los Angeles that Norman and Buff Chandler's son Otis inherited in 1960 — and, with his mother, proceeded over the next twenty years to reinvent — was, in other words, a new proposition, potentially a world-class city but still unformed, outgrowing its old controlling idea, its tropistic confidence in growth, and not yet seized by a new one.
He continued: "In his mind is the cultural detritus of all minds, the controlling ideas of the culture that are in everybody's mind.
A theme is a broad set of ideas that revolve around one central, controlling ideas.
Just listen to the denunciations of every arms control idea issued ritually by the civilians in charge of the Pentagon.
"They control culture, they control ideas.
They received coverage so compliant that they did not have to resort to censorship to control ideas and information.
