That's what I call "single vortex principle". The graph of data dependencies (flow of updates) in your application should ideally have only one circle (which includes the user). The minimal circles of data dependencies are what I call "vortices". Every time you have two different vortices in your application, a potential ambiguity arises about sequencing the updates. These are difficult to deal with and can cause bugs.

As you say, in MVC, the vortex should be User -> Controller -> Model -> View -> User. Best if this is the only vortex (Flux pattern). This can be nicely expressed functionally. That's why I think beans (and mutable variables in general) are bad because each has it's own small vortex of updates.