Shedding a Light on Gaslighting

November 17, 2022 10:21 AM

Gaslighting is a term that comes up a lot on MeFi, especially on the Green. Dr. Robin Stern, co-founder and associate director for the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, has a podcast called The Gaslight Effect that explores the concept, how it shows up in different situations, and how people can reclaim reality.
posted by brookeb (27 comments total)

I was about to write something about how much I've grown to dislike the term because it is so commonly misused, but TV Tropes beat me to the punch:

"Gaslighting" has undergone a certain amount of lexical devaluation. Rather than meaning "subtly influencing another's perception of reality to cause self-doubt," it is also often used to refer to subtle deception in general, or even brazen dishonesty in the face of all evidence to the contrary. At worst, one party in a conflict recalls events differently and accuses the other of "gaslighting" them even if no such malice is intended.
posted by tangerine at 11:15 AM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]

Gaslighting is a term that comes up a lot on MeFi, especially on the Green.

No it's not, you just think that.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 11:45 AM on November 17, 2022 [39 favorites]

a certain amount of lexical devaluation

To be fair to this post, Dr Stern was the one who popularized the term, and in the introductory episode of the podcast she defines its specific meaning and distinguishes it from the more indistinct ways it’s often come to be used.
posted by archy at 12:06 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

@tangerine

OP beat you to the punch, being literally a pointer to the originator of the term explaining what it's all about.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 12:22 PM on November 17, 2022

Have you heard the joke about gaslighting?

C'mon. Sure you have. You definitely have.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:58 PM on November 17, 2022 [10 favorites]

I just bought Dr. Stern's book at our library surplus sale for a dollar. It looks pretty good, but my partner noted that there doesn't seem to be much of a discussion of gaslighting and narcissism, although the bibliography does contain a few works discussing narcissism. Perhaps I am assuming that they are inseparable when that may not be the case.

Kohut, H. (1966). Forms and Transformations of Narcissism. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 14: 243–272.”

Morrison, A. P. (1983). Shame, Ideal Self, and Narcissism. Contemporary Psychoanalysis 19:295–318.

From a lazy Google scholar search:

Akis, A. D., and E. Ozturk. "Pathological narcissism: a comprehensive evaluation from the perspective of emotional abuse and" gaslighting." Artuklu Human Social Sci J 6 (2021): 1-31.
posted by mecran01 at 1:15 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

Two personal examples of the "lexical devaluation" of the term.

First, I've recently witnessed in my own community a situation where person A has cognitive, memory & personality disorder challenges, and person B being accused of gaslighting person A when they present documented proof of conversations between the two which person A has either forgotten or is unable to admit to knowing.

And just yesterday I saw a hot take that was going around Twitter saying that people with RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, strongly connected with adult ADHD) are gaslighting their friends when their dysphoria causes them to believe they are being rejected by those friends, and their behaviour is to stop contacting the friends they think hate them.

It's gotten to the point where as soon as I hear the word "gaslighting" in my community I can't help becoming immediately suspicious. This loss of meaning is ultimately useful to abusers who are intentionally manipulating victims in this way, since the term has come to include unrelated situations which already had reasonably good descriptors.
posted by WaylandSmith at 2:16 PM on November 17, 2022 [8 favorites]

What on earth is happening in the comments here?
As a victim of gaslighting (along with other forms of abuse), I can promise you this is totally real.

Right now this minute I can't go into examples (it's late here, I need to sleep), but I might return. But to begin with, have you listened to the podcast?
posted by mumimor at 2:29 PM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]

Same here. I absolutely take the topic seriously. I do apologize.

I added the podcast to my feeds after reading this post. I'll be checking it out soon.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:10 PM on November 17, 2022

Yes, what's really important about this topic is that some people use a word slightly incorrectly. Fuck all them exaggerating abuse victims, lexical devaluation must be stopped.
posted by Stoof at 3:12 PM on November 17, 2022 [4 favorites]

I saw the play in a 99-seat theater somewhere on Sunset Blvd (in LA-i read through this on preview and realized that there are "Sunset Blvds" elsewhere probably) with my junior year AP English Lit class in the late 90s. So I got to feel ahead of the curve when it came into vogue and also I've been SO ANGRY for so many years now about the way people over/incorrectly use this term. I finally let it go, only to learn Gen-Zers use "aesthetic" as an adjective. WHATTHEFUCKMYBRAIN. I really want to be one of those people who continues to adapt and change with the times! But this "aesthetic" thing is tough.
posted by atomicstone at 4:27 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

It just occurred to me that 99 seat or less theaters are an LA County thing. So, while a bit off topic, here's an explainer. It's an actor's equity thing.
posted by atomicstone at 4:30 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

>Yes, what's really important about this topic is that some people use a word slightly incorrectly.

The term has significant utility because gaslighting is a common behaviour and has not, until recently, been easy to describe as either the behaviour or the effect on the victim. If the term gets coopted by people who (for example) have a difference of opinion with someone they dislike, rather than people who are being abused, people who are victims of the behaviour will need to jump through more hoops to describe their experience. And please don't lump me in with the people in this thread who have jumped in with a joke, if that's what you've assumed.

Yes, the meaning of the word is secondary to the harm the behaviour causes to people, but I think discussing the definition of the word, as well as its change over time is useful. I think this is so particularly if people might be jumping into the conversation with a misconception of the definition the article is using. (Yes, I am assuming that not EVERYONE in this conversation read the article).

Not meaning to derail, and I won't thread-sit this further.
posted by WaylandSmith at 6:05 PM on November 17, 2022 [7 favorites]

I finally let it go, only to learn Gen-Zers use "aesthetic" as an adjective.

W.S. Gilbert was using it as an adjective in the late 19th century, and that's just the first example off the top of my head.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:00 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

Thanks, subscribed and listening now. Yesterday I explained the term to a family member where it was absolutely being used correctly. I think it’s still developing as a widely used social term.

I was gaslit absolutely and did find the jokes above funny in a bleak way.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:02 PM on November 17, 2022

gaslighting is a common behaviour

is it common, unqualified? It feels like the lexical devaluation is because it's an extreme form of emotional abuse but people are treating it as common, and calling a bunch of things that are not gaslighting by that name. Most relationships, I would say, do not feature gaslighting, even if abusive relationships often do.
posted by Merus at 7:15 PM on November 17, 2022 [2 favorites]

First, I've recently witnessed in my own community a situation where person A has cognitive, memory & personality disorder challenges, and person B being accused of gaslighting person A when they present documented proof of conversations between the two which person A has either forgotten or is unable to admit to knowing.

But is Person A really deliberately misusing and devaluing the term? It seems to me like for whatever reason, they're unable to perceive the entire reality of the situation, which would look like actual gaslighting from their point of view even if Person B isn't truly misleading them. It sounds like the parable of the blind men and the elephant; the blind men are honestly reporting what they perceive, even if it's not what's really there.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:33 PM on November 17, 2022

But it's entirely possible I'm misunderstanding.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:35 PM on November 17, 2022

Hey, has anyone here in the comments listened to the podcast?!?! I did! It was interesting! Anyone want to discuss it??

Here is an opener: what did you think of the discussion of gaslighting at work in relation to work-from-home and the pandemic?
posted by Toddles at 7:35 PM on November 17, 2022 [1 favorite]

But is Person A really deliberately misusing and devaluing the term? It seems to me like for whatever reason, they're unable to perceive the entire reality of the situation, which would look like actual gaslighting from their point of view even if Person B isn't truly misleading them.

Ahh, the missing context for that incident I didn't include was that there is no real question of what the truth of the statements were, at least within the larger community, full of witnesses and screenshots of conversations. Presenting person A with the evidence or testimony of witnesses was extremely distressing to the person, and confronting them with this information was declared by some members of the community to be abusive gaslighting when it became a pattern.

Getting back on topic, the devaluing of the term isn't being significantly caused by a single person who has an unreliable memory. The devaluing of the term is the result of communities of people discussing incidents within that community who decide that lies are not an essential component of gaslighting.

is it common, unqualified?

I guess common isn't a very specific term. Personally, most people I've introduced the term to have been able to immediately think of a relevant situation that happened to them personally or someone close to them. Until being introduced to the term they would simply describe it as "manipulative lying".
posted by WaylandSmith at 12:30 AM on November 18, 2022

The first episode is indeed brutal - divorce gaslighting and that it isn’t something that can be observed externally like physical abuse or even financial abuse was an interesting point brought up by the divorce lawyer.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:33 AM on November 18, 2022

I've just listened to the introduction, and it might explain some fundamental uncertainty I feel a lot of the time.

As for the beginning of the thread, it's an emotionally raw topic, and I can see not feeling good about starting with a series of jokes, even if they're individually harmless and pretty good jokes.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:30 AM on November 18, 2022

I don't know whether this thread is the place for it, but I'm curious about why some people turn out to be gaslighters.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 5:51 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm curious about why some people turn out to be gaslighters.

Well, why do people turn out to have sociopathic traits and a strong need for control? I think there is often some sort of trauma involved, that can be both physical and mental. I heard a really interesting podcast yesterday, with a far-right theologist, where she interviewed a prominent left-wing debater. And she said something like: I have realized that a huge part of growing up in a conservative family is that you are conditioned to be suspicious of the motives of everyone outside your family unit (or perhaps religious group). So I meet the world with suspicion.You leftists meet everyone with trust.
I thought it was pretty cool of her to understand that. Growing up in a hard right religious community can create the trauma that lead to abusing others, but so can growing up in a hippie commune, or more obviously: in the middle of a civil war. There is no one way, and it's not like everyone who was exposed to terrible things as a child or teen grows up to be a sociopathic control freak.
posted by mumimor at 7:17 AM on November 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Common meanings of words evolve over time, especially words used to describe behavioral phenomena. Sometimes this is due to our understanding of the phenomena changing. There is also a difference between scholarly and professional uses of the word and everyday use. Lexical devaluation seems overwrought to me.
posted by coldhotel at 7:06 AM on November 19, 2022

It's now so much later that I doubt anyone's still paying attention to this thread. But still, I wanted to come back to it because I've been super busy this last week and I never intended to snark and run.

I get that common meanings evolve over time. But this particular one bothers me because it's bad and wrong to deliberately undermine people's self-confidence by lying to them, and it's good to have a convenient, evocative term for that kind of abusive, controlling behavior.

And I think the "lexical devaluation" here is so widespread that Stern herself falls victim to it.

Here's what she says in her first episode:

"In simplest terms, to Gaslight means to intentionally seek to undermine another's confidence in their own reality by denying facts, the environment, and even feelings by switching a conversation into a force of powerful criticism of the gaslightee's character or reputation or adequacy."

Exactly! No problem there.

But then, in the October 30 blog post on her web site:

"Conflicts can veer into gaslighting if one person is so insistent that the other person starts to doubt themselves. A power imbalance in the relationship usually allows the gaslighter to undermine the gaslightee’s sense of self."

So...a power imbalance might in itself trigger a similar response, even when no one is denying facts and no one "intentionally seek[s] to undermine another's self-confidence"? Such a situation might trigger some self-doubt, and it's good to be alert to that. But it sure doesn't meet Stern's own definition of gaslighting.

Things get even more baffling in the pandemic workplace episode that Toddles recommended. That was an interesting episode. The guest identified some common problems and offered some sensible advice for people in various organizational roles. Specifically:

- a well-intended policy can't compensate for human nature (people who see each other regularly IRL are more likely to trust each other, with implications for raises and promotions)

- more communication is always better

- if you have a niggling sense that something isn't right, you should speak up

- and, perhaps most importantly, if you're in charge and someone reports that niggling unease, listen to what they're saying and respect their perspective.

But in not one of the instances in that podcast did anyone intentionally misrepresent reality to deliberately undermine another person's confidence.

In fact, in only one of those cases did anyone intentionally misrepresent reality at all! That was the scenario in which layoffs were coming, no one in the know was allowed to disclose that, and everyone could tell something was off.

By Stern's definition, it would be gaslighting if someone said "it looks like we're in for a round of layoffs", and was told by a superior who knew otherwise "you're wrong, you're out of line, just keep your head down and do your job." That would be a shitty, shitty thing to do!

I think it's a pretty significant jump from there to the milquetoast way I see the term commonly used, which is something like "represent a reality that doesn't square with a vulnerable person's experience."
posted by tangerine at 10:36 AM on November 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

tangerine, thanks for returning.
In spite of one of my experiences being work-place bullying and gaslighting, I agree that the episode about workplace situations is weak and perhaps even undermines the cause. It seems like they are too much involved with the toxic environment they are part of to separate its causes.
I have no doubt that they are in a toxic environment, and I wish them all the luck, but as someone who had to give up the legal fight after a really horrible work situation, I am very aware that we need accuracy if we want to stop this behaviour. (My union felt I was too vulnerable to go through a legal fight, and they may well have been right. But if it had been generally unacceptable to bully employees, my personal health wouldn't have been an issue).
The work situation was not the core of my PTSD, it is just what sent my symptoms through the roof, and almost into a mental health institution. But we all need to care for each other and make sure we have good lives, regardless of pre-existing conditions.
Academics scheming to get rid of a colleague they don't like are horrible people who probably have their own circle in hell. But they aren't the same as gaslighting sociopaths. I can tell you from experience.
posted by mumimor at 10:57 AM on November 25, 2022