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Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, or sanity. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's beliefs.

Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorientating the victim. The term originated from the 1938 Patrick Hamilton play Gas Light and its 1940 and 1944 film adaptations (both titled Gaslight), in which a character tries to make his wife believe that she has gone insane to cover his criminal activities. When he turns up the gas-fueled lights in the upstairs apartment in order to search for a murdered woman's jewels, the gaslights in his own apartment grow dimmer but he convinces his wife that she is imagining the change. The term has been used in clinical and research literature, as well as in political commentary.

Etymology

The term originates in the systematic psychological manipulation of a victim by her husband in the 1938 stage play Gas Light, and known as Angel Street in the United States, and the film adaptations released in 1940 and 1944. In the story, a husband attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by manipulating small elements of their environment and insisting that she is mistaken, remembering things incorrectly, or delusional when she points out these changes. The play's title alludes to how the abusive husband slowly dims the gas lights in their home, while pretending nothing has changed, in an effort to make his wife doubt her own perceptions. He also uses the lights in the sealed-off attic to secretly search for jewels belonging to a woman whom he has murdered. He makes loud noises as he searches, including talking to himself. The wife repeatedly asks her husband to confirm her perceptions about the dimming lights, noises and voices, but in defiance of reality, he keeps insisting that the lights are the same and instead it is she who is going insane. He intends on having her assessed and committed to a mental institution, after which he will be able to gain power of attorney over her and search more effectively.

The term "gaslighting" has been used colloquially since the 1960s to describe efforts to manipulate someone's perception of reality. The term has been used to describe such behaviour in psychoanalytic literature since the 1970s. In a 1980 book on child sexual abuse, Florence Rush summarized George Cukor's Gaslight (1944) based on the play and wrote, "even today the word is used to describe an attempt to destroy another's perception of reality."

Nature and use

Psychiatrist Theodore Dorpat described two characteristics of gaslighting: that the abuser wants full control of feelings, thoughts, or actions of the victim, and that the abuser emotionally abuses the victim, discreetly, but in hostile, abusive, or coercive ways. As described by Patricia Evans, seven "warning signs" of gaslighting are the observed abuser's:

1. Withholding information from the victim;
2. Countering information to fit the abuser's perspective;
3. Discounting information;
4. Using verbal abuse, usually in the form of jokes;
5. Blocking and diverting the victim's attention from outside sources;
6. Trivializing ("minimising") the victim's worth; and,
7. Undermining the victim by gradually weakening them and their thought processes.

Evans considers it necessary to understand the warning signs in order to begin the process of healing from it.

In a popular treatment, psychologist Elinor Greenberg has described three common methods of gaslighting:

1. Hiding. The abuser may hide things from the victim and cover up what they have done. Instead of feeling ashamed, the abuser may convince the victim to doubt their own beliefs about the situation and turn the blame on themselves.
2. Changing. The abuser feels the need to change something about the victim. Whether it be the way the victim dresses or acts, they want the victim to mold into their fantasy. If the victim does not comply, the abuser may convince the victim that he or she is in fact not good enough.
3. Control. The abuser may want to fully control and have power over the victim. In doing so, the abuser will try to seclude them from other friends and family so only they can influence the victim's thoughts and actions. The abuser gets pleasure from knowing the victim is being fully controlled by them.

An abuser's ultimate goal, as described by the divorce process coach Lindsey Ellison, is to make their victim second-guess their choices and to question their sanity, making them more dependent on the abuser. One tactic used to degrade a victim's self-esteem is the abuser alternating between ignoring and attending to the victim, so that the victim lowers their expectation of what constitutes affection, and perceives themselves as less worthy of affection.

According to philosophy professor Kate Abramson, the act of gaslighting is not specifically tied to being sexist, although women tend to be frequent targets of gaslighting compared to men who more often engage in gaslighting. Abramson explained this as a result of social conditioning, and said "it's part of the structure of sexism that women are supposed to be less confident, to doubt our views, beliefs, reactions, and perceptions, more than men. And gaslighting is aimed at undermining someone's views, beliefs, reactions, and perceptions. The sexist norm of self-doubt, in all its forms, prepares us for just that." Abramson said that the final "stage" of gaslighting is severe, major, clinical depression.

With respect to women in particular, philosophy professor Hilde Lindemann said that in such cases, the victim's ability to resist the manipulation depends on "her ability to trust her own judgements". Establishment of "counterstories" may help the victim reacquire "ordinary levels of free agency".

Sociopaths and narcissists frequently use gaslighting tactics to abuse and undermine their victims. Sociopaths consistently transgress social mores, break laws and exploit others, but typically also are convincing liars, sometimes charming ones, who consistently deny wrongdoing. Thus, some who have been victimized by sociopaths may doubt their own perceptions. Some physically abusive spouses may gaslight their partners by flatly denying that they have been violent. Gaslighting may occur in parent–child relationships, with either parent, child, or both lying to the other and attempting to undermine perceptions.

DARVO

Harassment covers a wide range of offensive behaviour. It is commonly understood as behaviour intended to disturb or upset. In the legal sense, it is behaviour which is found threatening or disturbing.

DARVO is an acronym used to describe a common strategy of abusers. The abuser will: Deny the abuse ever took place, then Attack the victim for attempting to hold the abuser accountable; then they will lie and claim that they, the abuser, are the real victim in the situation, thus Reversing the Victim and Offender. This usually involves gaslighting and victim blaming. Some therapists see DARVO as a specific form of gaslighting.

Psychologist Jennifer Freyd writes:

...I have observed that actual abusers threaten, bully and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable or asks them to change their abusive behavior. This attack, intended to chill and terrify, typically includes threats of law suits, overt and covert attacks on the whistle-blower's credibility, and so on. The attack will often take the form of focusing on ridiculing the person who attempts to hold the offender accountable. he offender rapidly creates the impression that the abuser is the wronged one, while the victim or concerned observer is the offender. Figure and ground are completely reversed. The offender is on the offense and the person attempting to hold the offender accountable is put on the defense.

Alleged examples of DARVO in public events include:

• The behavior of R. Kelly during an interview related to criminal proceedings against him for sexual abuse of minors
• The behavior of President Donald Trump in defending himself against sexual harassment allegations

DARVO has also been featured in popular entertainment. For example, the season finale of South Park depicts a phone call between Donald Trump and "Randy," in which DARVO is discussed as a strategy for Randy to defend himself.

In psychiatry

Gaslighting has been observed between patients and staff in inpatient psychiatric facilities.

In a 1981 article, "Some Clinical Consequences of Introjection: Gaslighting", psychoanalysts Victor Calef and Edward Weinshel argued that gaslighting involves the projection and introjection of psychic conflicts from the perpetrator to the victim: "this imposition is based on a very special kind of 'transfer' ... of potentially painful mental conflicts." The authors explored a variety of reasons why the victims may have "a tendency to incorporate and assimilate what others externalize and project onto them", and concluded that gaslighting may be "a very complex highly structured configuration which encompasses contributions from many elements of the psychic apparatus." Psychiatrist Theodore Dorpat (1994) described this as an example of projective identification.

In a 1996 book, Dorpat claimed that "gaslighting and other methods of interpersonal control are widely used by mental health professionals as well as other people" because they are effective methods for shaping the behavior of other individuals. Gaslighting depends on "first convincing the victim that his thinking is distorted and secondly persuading him that the victimizer's ideas are the correct and true ones."

In politics

Columnist Maureen Dowd was one of the first to use the term in the political context. She described the Bill Clinton administration's use of the technique in subjecting Newt Gingrich to small indignities intended to provoke him to make public complaints that "came across as hysterical".

In his 2008 book State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind, psychologist Bryant Welch described the prevalence of the technique in American politics beginning in the age of modern communications, stating:

To say gaslighting was started by the Bushes, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Fox News, or any other extant group is not simply wrong, it also misses an important point. Gaslighting comes directly from blending modern communications, marketing, and advertising techniques with long-standing methods of propaganda. They were simply waiting to be discovered by those with sufficient ambition and psychological makeup to use them.

Journalist Frida Ghitis used the term "gaslighting" to describe Russia's global relations. While Russian operatives were active in Crimea, Russian officials continually denied their presence and manipulated the distrust of political groups in their favor.

Journalists at the The New York Times Magazine, BBC and Teen Vogue, as well as psychologists Bryant Welch, Robert Feldman and Leah McElrath, have described some of the actions of Donald Trump during the 2016 US presidential election and his term as president as examples of gaslighting. Journalism professor Ben Yagoda wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education in January 2017 that the term gaslighting had become topical again as the result of Trump's behavior, saying that Trump's "habitual tendency to say 'X', and then, at some later date, indignantly declare, 'I did not say "X". In fact, I would never dream of saying "X"'" had brought new notability to the term.

In romantic relationships

Gaslighting can be experienced in romantic relationships. The psychological manipulation may include making the victim question their own memory, perception, and sanity. The abuser may invalidate the victim's experiences using dismissive language: "You're crazy. Don't be so sensitive. Don't be paranoid. I was just joking! ... I'm worried; I think you're not well."

Psychologists Jill Rogers and Diane Follingstad said that such dismissals can be detrimental to mental health outcomes. They described psychological abuse as "a range of aversive behaviors that are intended to harm an individual through coercion, control, verbal abuse, monitoring, isolation, threatening, jealousy, humiliation, manipulation, treating one as an inferior, creating a hostile environment, wounding a person regarding their sexuality and/or fidelity, withholding from a partner emotionally and/or physically".

Gaslighting has been observed in some cases of marital infidelity: "Therapists may contribute to the victim's distress through mislabeling the reactions. The gaslighting behaviors of the spouse provide a recipe for the so-called 'nervous breakdown' for some suicide in some of the worst situations."

In their 1988 article "Gaslighting: A Marital Syndrome", psychologists Gertrude Zemon Gass and William Nichols studied extramarital affairs and their consequences on men's spouses. They described how a man may try to convince his wife that she is imagining things rather than admitting to an affair: "a wife picks up a telephone extension in her own home and accidentally overhears her husband and his girlfriend planning a tryst while he is on a business trip." His denial challenges the evidence of her senses: "I wasn't on the telephone with any girlfriend. You must have been dreaming."

Rogers and Follingstand examined women's experiences with psychological abuse as a predictor of symptoms and clinical levels of depression, anxiety, and somatization, as well as suicidal ideation and life functioning. They concluded that psychological abuse affects women's mental health outcomes, but the perceived negative changes in one's traits, problematic relationship schemas, and response styles were stronger indicators of mental health outcomes than the actual abuse.

In the workplace

Gaslighting in the workplace is when people do things that cause colleagues to question themselves and their actions in a way that is detrimental to their careers. The victim may be excluded, made the subject of gossip, persistently discredited or questioned to destroy their confidence. The perpetrator may divert conversations to perceived faults or wrongs. Gaslighting can be committed by anyone and can be especially detrimental when the perpetrator has a position of power.

In popular culture

In the 2008 article "Falsifying Reality, Spawning Evil", writer David Shasha attempted to discover how one becomes a victim of gaslighting as he dissected the 1944 film Gaslight. Shasha compared gaslighting to the less extreme "rhetorical slight-of-hand" called pilpul in Hebrew. According to Shasha's literary analysis, the gaslighters first choose a target that is vulnerable, mentally weak, easily defeated and manipulated. The victim's ability to defend themselves is usually minimal. In relationships, the victim's honesty and love is manipulated and exploited in the process of gaslighting.

The 2016 American mystery film and psychological thriller The Girl on the Train explored the direct effects that gaslighting had on Rachel, the protagonist of the story. The perpetrator in the film was in fact Rachel's ex-husband Tom who was the violent abuser. Rachel suffered from severe depression and alcoholism. When Rachel would black out drunk, he consistently told her that she had done terrible things that she was incapable of remembering.

Gaslighting was the main theme of a 2016 plotline in BBC's radio soap opera, The Archers. The story concerned the emotional abuse of Helen Archer by her partner and later husband, Rob Titchener, over the course of two years, and caused much public discussion about the phenomenon.

For several months during 2018, gaslighting was a main plotline in NBC's soap opera Days of Our Lives, as character Gabi Hernandez was caught gaslighting her best friend Abigail Deveroux after Gabi was framed for a murder Abigail had committed in the series.

Pop group Steely Dan features a song entitled "Gaslighting Abbie" on their 2000 album Two Against Nature.

See also

• 2 + 2 = 5
• Alternative facts
• Authority bias
• Big lie
• Brainwashing
• Cognitive distortion
• Creeping normality
• Dangerous Crossing
• Deception
• Deconstruction
• Epistemic injustice
• Guilt trip
• Kafkatrap
• Martha Mitchell effect
• Mind games
• Professional abuse
• Psychological warfare
• Setting up to fail
• Stockholm syndrome
• Victim blaming
• Zersetzung

References

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Further reading

• Calef, Victor; Weinshel, Edward M. (January 1981). "Some Clinical Consequences of Introjection: Gaslighting". Psychoanalytic Quarterly. 50 (1): 44–66. doi:10.1080/21674086.1981.11926942. PMID 7465707. (subscription required)
• Portnow, Kathryn (1996). Dialogues of Doubt: The Psychology of Self-Doubt and Emotional Gaslighting in Adult Women and Men. Harvard Graduate School of Education. OCLC 36674740. (thesis/dissertation) (offline resource)
• Santoro, Victor (1994-06-30). Gaslighting: How to Drive Your Enemies Crazy. Loompanics Unlimited. ISBN 978-1-55950-113-2. OCLC 35172282. (offline resource)
• Sarkis, Stephanie (2018-10-01). Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People and Break Free. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0738284668. OCLC 5214974857. (offline resource)
• Stern, Robin (2007-05-01). The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life. Random House Digital. ISBN 978-0-7679-2445-0. Retrieved 2014-01-06. (limited preview available online)
• Sweet, P. L. (2019). "The Sociology of Gaslighting." American Sociological Review

External links

• Gaslighting as a Manipulation Tactic: what it is, who does it, and why by George K. Simon, Ph.D., article on the topic of gaslighting published by Counselling Resource on November 8, 2011
• Sarah Strudwick (November 16, 2010) Dark Souls – Mind Games, Manipulation and Gaslighting based on her book Dark Souls: Healing and Recovering from Toxic Relationships

• Bullying
• Communication of falsehoods
• Deception
• Delusions
• Mind control
• Narcissism
• Psychological abuse
• Psychological manipulation
• Psychopathy