Gaslighting

Gaslight, 1944

She hears footsteps from above, shuffling against the attic floorboards. A framed painting suddenly vanishes from a wall. The gas-fueled flames of the chandelier flicker and dim. 

She is certain it happened — but her husband assures her that she’s imagining it all. It’s her behavior that seems odd, he insists; perhaps she’s going mad? And, slowly, she begins to believe him.

This is the plot of the 1944 Ingrid Bergman film “Gaslight.” It is also the origin of a buzzword that has spread from pop culture to clinical psychology and back again.

This is a very specific accusation. To “gaslight” someone isn’t just to lie to them or to manipulate their emotions. It is a deliberate attempt to deceive someone into questioning their own perception of reality. (“Suddenly, I’m beginning not to trust my memory at all,” says Bergman’s character, Paula, as her faith in her senses begins to fray.)

Fortunately, some of our gaslighted heroines from fiction offer tips on how to break free of the cycle: 

Either it becomes so evident that something is wrong -- as in “The Shining,” where blood pouring out of the elevator is hard to ignore -- “or you need a witness, someone who is there to help you through it and point it out.

Beware of Gas Lighting

Gaslighting or gas-lighting is a form of manipulation through persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying in an attempt to destabilize and delegitimize a target. Its intent is to sow seeds of doubt in the targets, hoping to make them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Instances may range from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim. The term owes its origin to Gas Light, a 1938 play and 1944 film, and has been used in clinical and research literature. 

Ingrid Bergman in Gas Light (1944)