How do the notions of "panic" or "freezing at the controls" advance understanding?
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This does not seem good enough to set improvement and change by.
Believe me, I understand your frustration.
But I think that accepting the notion that there is a level of psychological shock capable of activating the mammalian "fight-or-flight" response - which even training, process and drill may not counteract - is a useful thing to understand in itself.
Don't get me wrong, it's a bloody frightening concept - and one which potentially flies in the face of several tenets the piloting community holds as dear and sacrosanct. In particular it raises a spectre that implies that even if you, as a pilot, attain a level of skill and experience on the level of, say, a Yeager or a Beamont - there nevertheless potentially exists a set of circumstances in which all that skill and experience may go out the window and as a result may not only get you killed, but killed in a manner which could easily be interpreted/construed as being of your own doing. Now I'm not a line pilot, but I don't mind admitting that that thought process would scare the bejeezus out of me if I were.
On the other hand, the flipside of accepting this possibility could be positive. By which I mean that if it were to become a central tenet of CRM that any pilot, no matter how skilled or experienced, may fall victim to irrational behaviour in the heat of the moment and - crucially - that this should neither reflect on their perceived piloting qualities nor necessarily be anything more than a one-off aberration (after all - anyone can have a "bad day at the office"), then I can't help but think it may go some way to erasing the stigma involved in having to take control in such circumstances - both on the part of the pilot who takes control and the pilot who has been relieved of control.
In some ways, this ingrained perception that pilots who made mistakes must have been in some way deficient was negated as far back as "Fate Is The Hunter". The only pilot in the book that Gann explicitly refers to as being incompetent and having obtained his position by deception is eventually found out and loses his career, but is not killed as a result of his incompetence. On the other hand, several pilots who Gann states were absolutely competent end up losing their lives regardless. It's a thought-provoking point.