How the Meaning of Gaslighting Has Been Diluted

Source: Aleshyn Andrei/Shutterstock

The term "gaslighting" originated in 1938, but it was not until about 2010 that it was widely used. It still includes the original meaning—malign efforts to convince someone that their own sense of reality is unreliable—but it now also includes a variety of personal, social, and political influences.

Usage took on another growth spurt around 2020, and in 2022 "gaslighting" was flagged by Merriam-Webster as Word of the Year. Some now question whether the proliferation of the term dilutes the meaning required to satisfy what Leslie Jamison calls "a widespread hunger to name a certain kind of harm." [1]

To prevent widespread usage from emptying this useful term of meaning, noted psychologists and philosophers are trying to pin down definitions. Some proposed definitions, however, distort and limit the concept.

For example, it is argued that a key dynamic of gaslighting is that victims collude with the gaslighter as they lose trust in their own experiences and beliefs. Gaslighting is not psychological violence, it is argued, but a "voluntary relinquishing of one’s own narrative to another person" and the "victim" should be tasked with asking themselves what benefits them in engaging with their abuser. [2]

Failed Efforts in Clarification

Gaslighting victims do turn against themselves, internalizing the voice that says, "You cannot trust what you think you know," but framing this as collusion risks meta-gaslighting by telling victims that they are "really benefitting" from what tortures them. One clear counter-example is in any child/parent relationship wherein a child is primed by the nature of the relationship itself to trust a parent’s view.

In other cases, a victim more or less successfully resists being gaslit, but is harmed nonetheless because the story the gaslighter tells others about the victim devalues and undermines their testimony. Questioning, "Why do I continue to engage with my gaslighter?" has its place primarily after the victim, having identified the dynamic, considers whether to challenge or exit the relationship.

Another definition includes intentionality as a key feature of gaslighting. The perpetrator, it is argued, must know what they are doing, and the beliefs they are trying to inculcate in their victim must be false. [3] But does the gaslighter necessarily work to convince the victim that what is false is actually true?

There are many, many different ways an event can be described, and many different ways outcomes can be explained. We cannot always declare as true or false the common gaslighter’s accusation, "This is your fault." The aim—and the violence—arise from the gaslighter’s insistence on controlling the narrative and dismissing that of the victim, and this can be achieved without outright falsehoods.

A parent, peer, partner, or politician might emphasize one aspect of a situation or event and ignore others: "You don’t understand what’s happening. You’re too young/selfish/insecure/stupid/limited." This might be true, or partly true, because anyone can fail to grasp all the details of what is happening: Is someone my parent disapproves of a good friend, or are they using or misleading me? Is my behavior responsible for my partner’s anger? Am I imagining a partner’s betrayal? Will the opposing candidate, if elected, really wreck the economy? The gaslighter weakens self-trust without actually lying.

Core Features of Gaslighting

We can set aside a victim's "collusion" and the gaslighter’s intentional falsehoods as central to a definition of gaslighting. Two core features remain.

The first is the exploitation of the victim’s fallibility and their normal, healthy acknowledgment that it is possible to be mistaken. Gaslighters transform this into global self-doubt—a state in which the victim ceases to have any trust in their own experience and memory. The second core feature is to set up the gaslighter as expert narrator: "My story is real and yours is not."

Gaslighting Essential Reads

A New Questionnaire Measures Gaslighting Victimization

6 Long-Term Effects of Being Gaslighted

With these core features, more expansive meanings of gaslighting can be honed by taking into account different contexts: parent and child, peer or friendship groups, and romantic partners. Then, in less intimate contexts are a politician’s free-wheeling explanations and predictions; sidelining of a person’s story because of their gender, race, ethnicity, or wealth; and what is now called institutional gaslighting.

In every context, the two core features of gaslighting are present (exploitation of personal fallibility and presumption of narrative control), but other features associated with gaslighting (outright falsehoods, intentionality, and victim's collision) are more likely to be present in some contexts than in others. In my next post, I will look at the different features of gaslighting in these different contexts.

Facebook image: voronaman/Shutterstock