If your plane is out-of-control, why does military training instruct releasing the joystick to neutralize controls? I quote from Sunday Night's June 3 2019 episode with Capt Kevin Sullivan. I ask about Capt Sullivan's remark with quotation marks below.

Releasing the joystick is undoubtedly counter-intuitive to me, as I haven't been trained in military aviation! Can someone please expound? Please make this counter-intuitive neutralisation of controls intuitive? 


  12:20
  Kevin Sullivan's next move is
  12:23
  completely counter-intuitive. Instead of
  12:26
  pulling back on the control stick, he
  12:29
  lets it go. "I have a choice to make. Do I
  12:33
  hold on to it or do I release it? And my
  12:37
  military training for out-of-control is
  12:40
  to release. Neutralize controls." It works.
  12:45
  The plane is no longer falling from the
  12:48
  sky, but now passengers
  12:51
  are being smashed back down to the floor.
Many abnormal situations can be at least partly pilot-induced.

Most civil airplanes (modern military ones are another topic - but computers add to that... ) are aerodynamically stable. Releasing the controls gets rid of probable faulty input and gives the plane a chance to stabilize. This might work (did in this case), but if there is a situation where the normal stability is no longer present - it might increase the problem.