What Is Gaslighting?

The term "gaslighting" refers to a complex and covert method of psychological manipulation and deceit that is typically carried out by a single deceiver, also known as a "gaslighter," on a single victim over the course of an extended length of time. It has the effect of gradually undermining the victim's faith in his ability to separate truth from deception, right from wrong, or reality from appearance, and as a result, it causes the victim to become pathologically dependent on the gaslighter in his thinking or feelings. As a natural byproduct of the process, the victim's sense of self-worth is badly wounded, and he develops an increased reliance on the gaslighter for the emotional support and validation he needs. In other instances, the result that was intended for the victim to achieve (and did achieve) was to strip him of his sanity. According to the clinical literature, this phenomenon is a form of narcissistic abuse in which the extreme narcissist attempts to satisfy his pathological need for constant affirmation and esteem (for "narcissistic supply") by converting vulnerable people into intellectual and emotional slaves, whom he paradoxically despises for their victimhood. The term "narcissistic supply" refers to the pathological need for constant affirmation and esteem. Because the person who gaslights others often suffers from some form of mental illness, he or she is frequently not completely conscious of what it is that they are doing or why they are doing it.

The phrase is taken from the title of a British stage play that was performed in 1938 and titled Gas Light. The play was then adapted into a film titled Gaslight and released in the United Kingdom in 1940 and in the United States in 1944. These scenarios presented some of the fundamental aspects of the method in a clear and engaging manner, albeit in a manner that was perhaps a little too simplistic. Gaslighting techniques can include the following: attempting to convince the victim of the truth of something intuitively bizarre or outrageous by forcefully insisting on it or by marshalling superficial evidence; flatly denying that one has said or done something that one has obviously said or done; dismissing the victim's contrary perceptions or feelings as invalid or pathological; questioning the knowledge and impugning the motives of persons who contradict the viewpoint of the gaslighter; gradually shifting the focus of the conversation away from the gaslight In the play and the films, for instance, a dishonest husband drives his wife to the brink of insanity by convincing her that she is a kleptomaniac and that she has only imagined the sounds in the attic and the dimming of the gaslights in their house, which were actually the result of his searching for her aunt's missing jewels. This causes her to believe that she is responsible for the sounds and dimming of the gaslights in their home.