  Pat, they say when you are spinning out of control on snow / ice you should turn the opposite way of how you want to react.
Is this for front and rear wheel drive cars? Listen to your father. Usually when your car starts to slide it is the back tires that will slide out. To counteract this and to get the car pointed straight again you turn the wheel in the direction that the back end of the car swung out.
Let's say you are turning left in your example or rounding a corner to the left. The back of the car goes to your right, so you want to cut the wheel back to the right to straighten the car out. Here's the basic physics: Centripetal forces act on the car when you change direction (like turning around a curve). This force is outward from the curve, it would tend to push the car off the road to the outside of the curve. Normally the tires do a good job of gripping the road via frictional forces. But when you hit a slippery part the tires lose friction and the centripetal force takes over and the car slides to the outside of the curve. Now if all four wheels lose friction with the road... Well, you are pretty much in trouble at this point until the front tires get some grip back.
In that situation you should turn the wheel in the direction that you want the car to go in, and apply some power. This happened to me actually. On freeway, it was wet. Cut wheel to avoid car in front of me who slammed on brakes. Cut wheel back sharply and overcorrected, send myself into a skid sideways on the freeway.
Front of car was facing toward the far left lane, so I cut the wheel to the right so I was pointed back in the right direction. 
