While it’s most common in romantic settings, gaslighting can happen in any kind of relationship where one person is so important to the other that they don’t want to take the chance of upsetting or losing them, such as a boss, friend, sibling, or parent.
Gaslighting in interpersonal relationships often develops or builds on an existing power dynamic. It’s unclear when exactly the term seeped into the world of popular psychology, but it’s now frequently employed in couples counseling and self-help books to describe a specific type of toxic relationship. Experts postulated that women were trained to long and hunger for relationships and connection, a conditioning that made them vulnerable to exploitation of their attachment, which is exactly what gaslighting is. Its use goes back as far as 1980 in academic journal articles about women’s socialization. The term appeared in academic discourse before it hit the mainstream. Yet when Paula asks why the gaslights are flickering, he insists that it’s not really happening and that it’s all in her mind, causing her to doubt her self-perception. In one pivotal scene, Gregory causes the gaslights in the house to flicker by turning them on in the attic of the house. In the film, husband Gregory manipulates his adoring, trusting wife Paula into believing she can no longer trust her own perceptions of reality.
#Gaslighting me meaning movie
The phrase originated from a 1938 mystery thriller written by British playwright Patrick Hamilton called Gas Light, made into a popular movie in 1944 starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. My book was rereleased earlier this year when gaslighting became a cultural phenomenon - specifically, the constant lies from the Trump administration while his supporters trumpeted his fast and loose twisting of reality.
It’s why I coined the term “gaslight effect” in my 2007 book, referring to the long-term consequences of experiencing repeated gaslighting over time. I’m a licensed psychoanalyst and the associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, and over the years, I have spoken with hundreds of people experiencing gaslighting in their personal lives. When left unexamined, gaslighting can have a devastating and long-term impact on our emotional, psychological, and sometimes physical well-being.
#Gaslighting me meaning how to
Most of us have been gaslighted at some point in our lives, making it important to learn how to spot the technique, shut it down, and minimize the psychological impact on our daily lives. But it’s likely there’s someone much closer to us doing the job. Maybe we’re all being gaslighted by the president or other political figures. If a wife tells her husband that he is shirking child care responsibilities and he responds by refusing to acknowledge that it’s even happening, he is gaslighting her. Targets of gaslighting are manipulated into turning against their cognition, their emotions, and who they fundamentally are as people. In the vernacular, the phrase “to gaslight” refers to the act of undermining another person’s reality by denying facts, the environment around them, or their feelings.
#Gaslighting me meaning series
Anderson Cooper’s nightly news roundup, Anderson Cooper 360, has a special series called “We’ll Leave the Gaslight On,” dedicated to the lies of politicians. It is now part of how we acquire information. The term has been everywhere since Donald Trump’s inauguration, so much so that the Oxford Dictionaries named it one of the most popular words of 2018: gaslighting. This article discussing the meaning and rise of the term was originally published in 2018 and last updated in 2019.
Editor’s note, November 28, 2022: Merriam-Webster announced that “gaslighting” is its 2022 word of the year.
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