Word studies, Part 6 - Gaslight/Gaslighting

The term gaslighting comes from a 1938 play Gas Light, where a wife frets over the inexplicable dimming of her house's gas lights. Her worries are dismissed by her husband as an overactive imagination. In reality, the husband is dimming the lights. He begns to manipulate other elements of his wife's life, and insists that she is misremembering. Gaslighting is often almost torture--lies are presented to a victim, and eventually, they begin to doubt their own memory, and eventually, their sanity itself. It's a classic plot device in literature and movies--when you change and shuffle things in a person's environment without their knowledge. When they mention the changes, you tell them they "must be imagining things."

In psychology, gaslighting is sometimes referred to as The Martha Mitchell Effect, after John Mitchell's--Dick Nixon's Attorney General--infamous wife. The Martha Mitchell Effect is what happens when a sbrink or other mental health worker mistakes the patient's perception of real events as delusional and treats the patient accordingly. A psychologist, Brendan Maher, named the effect after Martha Beall Mitchell. When she alleged that White House officials were engaged in illegal activities, her claims were attributed to mental illness and alcohol abuse. Münchausen syndrome by proxy is another disorder with many similarities to gaslighting.

One psychological definition of gaslighting is--according to Wikipedia at least-- "an increasing frequency of systematically withholding factual information from, and/or providing false information to, the victim - having the gradual effect of making them anxious, confused, and less able to trust their own memory and perception."

The psychotherapist Joseph Berke once wrote that "even paranoids have enemies." It is especially easy to misdiagnose a person with a history of paranoid delusions (we could call this something like the Chicken Little Factor).

In the 2001 movie Amélie, Amélie decides to gaslight her local grocer as payback for the way he treats his dim-bulb assistant, Lucien. Amelie switches his lightbulbs with lower wattage bulbs and replaces his slippers with smaller ones, among other pranks.

On their album Two Against Nature, Steely Dan have a song "Gaslighting Abbie" about a husband and his mistress planning to drive his wife insane.

In the 2007 movie The Darjeeling Limited, Adrien Brody's character asks Jason Schwartzman's character "Could she be gaslighting you?" when he discovers his ex-girlfriend had placed her perfume into his luggage.

The play The Mystery of Irma Vep has a scene where Lady Enid tells her husband about the strange things that have been happening in the house. The lights begin dimming. When she mentions it, her husband assures her that the lights are not dimming.



In Roald Dahl's book "The Twits," Mr. Twit tried to make Mrs Twit think she'd contracted a deadly disease.

In some sense, we were probably all gaslighted by Dick Cheney and George Bush, with the mysterious vanishing Weapons of Mass Destruction.
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Excerpted from The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life By Robin Stern, Ph.D.

"Turn Up Your Gaslight Radar. Check for These Twenty Telltale Signs
Gaslighting may not involve all of these experiences or feelings, but if you recognize yourself in any of them, give it extra attention."

1. You are constantly second-guessing yourself.
2. You ask yourself, "Am I too sensitive?" a dozen times a day.
3. You often feel confused and even crazy at work.
4. You're always apologizing to your mother, father, boyfriend, boss.
5. You wonder frequently if you are a "good enough" girlfriend/wife/employee/friend/daughter.
6. You can't understand why, with so many apparently good things in your life, you aren't happier.
7. You buy clothes for yourself, furnishings for your apartment, or other personal purchases with your partner in mind, thinking about what he would like instead of what would make you feel great.
8. You frequently make excuses for your partner's behavior to friends and family.
9. You find yourself withholding information from friends and family so you don't have to explain or make excuses.
10. You know something is terribly wrong, but you can never quite express what it is, even to yourself.
11. You start lying to avoid the put-downs and reality twists.
12. You have trouble making simple decisions.
13. You think twice before bringing up certain seemingly innocent topics of conversation.
14. Before your partner comes home, you run through a checklist in your head to anticipate anything you might have done wrong that day.
15. You have the sense that you used to be a very different person - more confident, more fun-loving, more relaxed.
16. You start speaking to your husband through his secretary so you don't have to tell him things you're afraid might upset him.
17. You feel as though you can't do anything right.
18. Your kids begin trying to protect you from your partner.
19. You find yourself furious with people you've always gotten along with before.
20. You feel hopeless and joyless."
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