Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group. It may evoke changes in them such as cognitive dissonance or low self-esteem, rendering the victim additionally dependent on the gaslighter for emotional support and validation. The term originated from the British play Gas Light, performed as Angel Street in the United States, and its 1940 and 1944 film adaptations.
About Gaslighting in brief
Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group. It may evoke changes in them such as cognitive dissonance or low self-esteem, rendering the victim additionally dependent on the gaslighter for emotional support and validation. The term originated from the British play Gas Light, performed as Angel Street in the United States, and its 1940 and 1944 film adaptations. The goal of gaslighting is to gradually undermine the victim’s confidence in their own ability to distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or reality from delusion. It can be either conscious or unconscious, and is carried out covertly such, that the resulting emotional abuse is not overtly abusive. Gaslighting depends on convincing the victim that thinking is distorted and persuading that the victimizer’s ideas are the correct and true ones. The psychic affects, perceptions, fantasies, delusions, conflicts, and conflicts of a victim may include a variety of reasons why the victims may have assimilated and project what they project onto others during a gaslighting experience. Gaslight is a phenomenon in which people come to believe something because it has been repeated so often, and often because it may occur to a victim during a victim project or during a therapy session. It has been used to describe such behaviour in psychoanalytic literature since the 1970s and is now used in clinical psychological literature as well as in political commentary and philosophy.
When a group of people acts as a victimizer, gaslighting does its damage through group members’ actions that have power through their accumulation and reinforcement, often invisible to the listener. Victims tend to be people with less power and authority. The role of either victimizer or victim can oscillate within a given relationship and often each of the participants is convinced that they are the victim. The word ‘gaslighting’ was used colloquially since the 1960s to describe efforts to manipulate someone’s perception of reality. In a 1980 book on child sexual abuse, Florence Rush summarized George Cukor’s Gaslight based on the play and wrote, \”even today the word is used to describe an attempt to destroy another’s perception of reality. \”Gaslighting involves a person, or a groups of people, the mental abuser or the victimizers, and a second person, the victim, It may facilitate development of confusion, anxiety, depression, and in some extreme cases, even psychosis. : 34 Victims may have a tendency to assimilate what they see and hear from others, and to try to project and externalize what they think others are thinking to them. Gaslighting can be carried out by either the abuser or victimizer in a covert way, such as by changing the lights in the sealed-off attic to secretly search for jewels belonging to a woman whom he has murdered. : 35 Gaslighting is often used by the abuser to gain power of attorney over his victim, after which he will be able to better control her.
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This page is based on the article Gaslighting published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
