Gaslighting
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For other uses, see Gas
lighting and Gaslight (disambiguation).
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Ingrid
Bergman in the 1944 film Gaslight
Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information
is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory and perception.
It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever
occurred, or it could be the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the
intention of disorienting the victim.
The term "gaslighting" comes from the play Gas Light
and its film adaptations. In those works a man uses a variety of tricks to
convince his wife that she is crazy, so that she won't be believed when she
reports strange things that are genuinely occurring, including the dimming of
the gas lights in the house (which happens when her husband turns on the
normally unused gas lamps in the attic to conduct clandestine activities
there). The term is now also used in clinical and research literature.[1][2]
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[edit] Etymology
The term derives from the 1938 stage play Gas Light
(known as Angel Street in the United States), and the 1940 and 1944 film adaptations. The plot concerns a
husband who attempts to convince his wife and others that she is insane by
manipulating small elements of their environment, and insisting that she is
mistaken or misremembering when she points out these changes. The title stems
from the dimming of the house's gas
lights which happens when the husband is using the gas lights in the attic
while searching for the treasure there. The wife accurately notices the dimming
which the husband insists she's imagining.
The term "gaslighting" has been used colloquially since at least
the late 1970s to describe efforts to manipulate someone's sense of reality. In
a 1980 book on child sex abuse, Florence
Rush summarized George Cukor's 1944 film version of Gas Light, and
writes, "even today the word [gaslight] is used to describe an attempt to
destroy another's perception of reality".[3]
[edit] Introjection
In an influential article "Some Clinical Consequences of Introjection:
Gaslighting", the authors argue 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 painful and
potentially painful mental conflicts'.[4]
They explore a variety of reasons why the victims may have 'a tendency to
incorporate and assimilate what others externalize and project onto them', and
conclude that gaslighting can be 'a very complex, highly structured
configuration which encompasses contributions from many elements of the psychic
apparatus'.[4]
[edit] Resisting
With respect to women in particular, Hilde
Lindemann argued that "in gaslighting cases...ability to resist
depends on her ability to trust her own judgements."[5]
Establishing "counterstories" to that of the gaslighter may help the
victim re-acquire or even for the first time "acquire ordinary
levels of free agency".[5]
[edit] Clinical examples
Psychologist Martha Stout states that Sociopaths
frequently use gaslighting tactics. Sociopaths consistently transgress social
mores, break laws, and exploit others, but are also typically charming
and convincing liars
who consistently deny
wrongdoing. Thus, some who have been victimized
by sociopaths may doubt their perceptions.[6]
Jacobson and Gottman report that some physically
abusive spouses may gaslight their partners, even flatly denying that they
have been violent [2].
Psychologists Gertrude Gass and William C. Nichols use the term
"gaslighting" to describe a dynamic observed in some cases of marital
infidelity: "Therapists may contribute to the victim's distress through
mislabeling the women's reactions. [...] The gaslighting behaviors of the
husband provide a recipe for the so-called 'nervous
breakdown' for some women [and] suicide in some of the worst
situations."[7]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
Notes
^ Dorpat, Theodore
L. (28 October 1996). Gaslighting,
the double whammy, interrogation, and other methods of covert control in
psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. J. Aronson. ISBN 978-1-56821-828-1.
http://books.google.com/books?id=3vLaAAAAMAAJ.
Retrieved 16 June 2011.