On Gaslighting

On Gaslighting Plot Summary

Introduction

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person makes another question their own sanity, perceptions, memories, and judgment. The term originates from the 1944 film "Gaslight," where a husband manipulates his wife into believing she is losing her mind. While once a niche concept primarily used in therapeutic contexts, gaslighting has now entered mainstream vocabulary, appearing in media discourse, political commentary, and everyday conversations about interpersonal relationships. What makes gaslighting particularly insidious is its multidimensional nature as both an interpersonal phenomenon and a moral wrong. Unlike other forms of manipulation, gaslighting specifically aims to undermine a person's basic capacities as a deliberator and moral agent, turning their own reflective processes and affective capacities against them. By examining gaslighting in detail - its aims, methods, and moral dimensions - we gain insight not only into this destructive form of psychological manipulation but also into fundamental aspects of human social life: trust, empathy, the nature of moral agency, and the ways in which our deliberative capacities are tied to our sense of self and standing in the world.

Chapter 1: Defining Gaslighting: Beyond Simple Manipulation

Gaslighting represents a distinctive and particularly destructive form of manipulation that goes beyond simply lying or dismissing someone. At its core, gaslighting involves making someone doubt not just particular beliefs but their very capacity to form appropriate beliefs, perceptions, and reactions. The gaslighter tries to induce in their target the sense that their reactions, perceptions, memories, and beliefs are so utterly without grounds as to qualify as "crazy," while simultaneously working to make this perception a reality by systematically undermining the target's deliberative capacities and moral agency. Unlike simple manipulation or dismissal, gaslighting necessarily takes place over an extended period. A single instance of telling someone "that's crazy" doesn't constitute gaslighting. Rather, gaslighting involves a pattern of interactions that gradually erodes the target's confidence in their own judgment. This temporal dimension is crucial - gaslighting requires consistent malfeasance over time to achieve its destructive aims. The gaslighter employs numerous tactics: denying events occurred, claiming the target is misremembering, minimizing concerns, shifting blame, isolating the target from others who might validate their experiences, and weaponizing empathy and trust. Importantly, gaslighting has a particular motivational psychology behind it. The gaslighter typically cannot tolerate even the possibility of challenge to their perspective. When faced with disagreement, instead of engaging with or dismissing the opposing view, they attempt to eliminate the very possibility of disagreement by undermining the source - by making it so their target has no independent standpoint from which to disagree. This distinguishes gaslighting from simply dismissing someone or not taking them seriously. The dismisser merely ignores the other's perspective; the gaslighter tries to destroy it. Whether conscious or not, the gaslighter's central aim is to radically undermine their target's standing as an independent deliberator and moral agent. Some gaslighters pursue this aim with full awareness (like Gregory in the film "Gaslight"), while others may not be fully conscious of what they're doing. This doesn't diminish their responsibility, as we routinely hold people accountable for unconscious aims evident in their behavior patterns. The gaslighter's goal is not merely to change what their target believes but to fundamentally compromise how they form beliefs and make judgments. The consequences for targets are devastating. When successful, gaslighting doesn't just lead to incorrect beliefs - it damages the target's basic deliberative abilities and sense of moral agency. The victim experiences themselves as "carved up," "nobody," or as Simone de Beauvoir described after being gaslit by Sartre, "no longer sure what I think, or even if I think at all." This radical undermining is the hallmark of successful gaslighting, distinguishing it from other forms of manipulation, deception, or dismissal.

Chapter 2: The Gaslighter's Aims: Undermining Target's Rational Agency

The motivational psychology of gaslighters represents a puzzle. Given the extraordinary effort required to gaslight someone, why don't gaslighters choose simpler means to achieve their ends? In the film "Gaslight," Gregory could have simply searched for the jewels when Paula was away rather than engaging in an elaborate scheme to have her committed. This puzzle reveals something crucial about gaslighting: the gaslighter's aims aren't merely instrumental but involve a deep need to radically undermine their target's independence. Central to the gaslighter's psychology is an inability to tolerate challenge. As clinical psychoanalyst Robin Stern notes, "A gaslighter can't tolerate the slightest challenge to the way he sees things." This anxiety in the face of potential disagreement helps explain why gaslighters behave as they do, though it doesn't fully account for their specific tactics. After all, someone who cannot tolerate disagreement might simply dismiss or ignore dissenters rather than systematically trying to undermine them. What distinguishes gaslighters is that they are deeply invested in what their targets think and believe. They don't just need the world to appear a certain way to themselves; they need their targets to see it that way too. The characteristic aim of gaslighting is to destroy the very possibility of disagreement by eliminating independent, separate perspectives from which disagreement might arise. The gaslighter aims to undermine their target so radically that they have nowhere left to stand from which to disagree. This explains why gaslighters describe their targets as "crazy," "paranoid," or "oversensitive" - these are ways of framing the target as beyond the reach of reason, as someone who cannot issue genuine challenges. The gaslighter creates a comforting fantasy that the target's words don't constitute genuine disagreement because the target lacks the standing to issue challenges. Importantly, gaslighters often have conflicting aims. While trying to undermine their target's independence, they may simultaneously want to maintain a relationship with them. Collier in "Pat and Mike" wants Pat to abandon her career and marry him, but this requires Pat to have enough agency to choose to marry him while simultaneously being undermined enough to "let him take charge." Such tensions in the gaslighter's motives can make their behavior appear inconsistent or confusing to targets. The undermining efforts of gaslighters specifically target those capacities essential to independent agency. When a target says they feel "carved up" or "nobody," they're expressing the loss of their sense of standing as an independent agent. The gaslighter's accusations - that the target is "crazy," "paranoid," or "oversensitive" - attack not just the target's specific claims but their basic standing as someone capable of making valid claims at all. This isn't merely about changing what someone believes but about attacking their capacity to form beliefs independently and make judgments based on their own perceptions. Understanding this motivational psychology helps explain why gaslighting involves such distinctive methods. The gaslighter doesn't just want compliance; they want the target to lose confidence in their own perspective while maintaining just enough agency to affirm the gaslighter's version of reality. The aim is not merely to silence disagreement but to eliminate its very possibility by undermining the deliberative capacities from which it might arise.

Chapter 3: Methods and Tools: The Perversion of Trust and Empathy

Gaslighters employ a distinctive array of manipulative tools that are particularly well-suited to their destructive aims. What makes these tools especially effective - and especially perverse - is that they turn fundamental aspects of the target's psychological life against them. The gaslighter weaponizes precisely those dispositions that enable meaningful interpersonal relationships and autonomous agency: trust, empathy, love, the working presumption of one's own fallibility, and social connections. Trust features prominently in the gaslighter's arsenal. Whether in close relationships or professional contexts, gaslighters exploit their targets' trust by gradually expanding the domains in which they expect to be trusted and by responding to legitimate doubts with accusations of betrayal. In "Gaslight," Gregory gives Paula a brooch he claims belonged to his grandmother, emphasizes its importance, then secretly removes it from her purse to accuse her of losing it - creating a false breach of trust that further undermines her. Workplace gaslighters similarly manipulate professional trust, with bosses who say, "Just trust me on this," then later deny making promises or commitments. The gaslighter also makes perverse use of our natural recognition of our own fallibility. The working presumption that "I might be wrong" is essential for reasonable deliberation and conversation. Gaslighters exploit this by framing disagreements not as differences in perspective but as evidence of the target's defective reasoning. When they say "that's crazy" or "you're being paranoid," they're not inviting reasonable reconsideration but trying to induce radical self-doubt about one's basic capacities. This gradually erodes the target's confidence in their ability to form apt beliefs and judgments. Love and empathy become powerful weapons in the gaslighter's hands. When a gaslighter who is beloved by their target says "you're hurting me by questioning me" or "have some sympathy," they're using the target's care for them as leverage. Since love involves giving some weight to the beloved's perspective, the gaslighter can use this to create emotional pressure that reinforces their undermining project. Similarly, appeals to empathy - "have some sympathy for the guy" - exploit the target's moral capacities, especially when combined with social norms that expect greater empathy from members of certain groups, like women. Isolation serves as both a method and an outcome of gaslighting. Gaslighters often restrict their targets' social connections, both literally (preventing them from seeing friends) and metaphorically (undermining trust in others' perspectives). This deprives targets of alternative sources of information and "reality-checks" while making them more emotionally dependent on the gaslighter. As Hume noted, human beings are miserable in isolation, making it an effective tool for emotional manipulation. The gaslighter may also exploit oppressive social norms and stereotypes, particularly against members of marginalized groups. Claims that women are "hysterical" or "oversensitive," that Black people are "angry" or "paranoid," or that working-class people are "ignorant" become ready-made tools for gaslighting. These stereotypes can be activated in targets who have internalized them, creating a pathway for self-doubt that wouldn't exist without these pernicious social tropes. What unites these methods is their perverse appropriation of precisely those dispositions that are fundamental to our functioning as deliberators and moral agents. We cannot avoid trusting others, presuming our own fallibility, forming loving relationships, or empathizing with others. By weaponizing these unavoidable aspects of human psychology, gaslighters ensure that their targets' very attempts to engage reasonably with the world become vehicles for their own undermining.

Chapter 4: Social Structures and Gaslighting: Relationship and Distinctions

The relationship between social structures and gaslighting has become a subject of increasing attention, with some scholars proposing the concept of "structural gaslighting" to describe situations where social structures themselves have "crazy-making" effects. While pernicious social structures certainly interact with interpersonal gaslighting in important ways, there are compelling reasons to maintain a distinction between interpersonal gaslighting and structural phenomena like oppressive norms, hermeneutical injustices, and double binds. Social structures can play significant roles in gaslighting without themselves "doing the gaslighting." First, gaslighters often deploy oppressive social tropes and stereotypes as tools - the racist who tells a Black person they're "overreacting" to discrimination or the sexist who frames a woman as "hysterical" when she protests mistreatment. Second, gaslighting frequently occurs in response to protests against discrimination, as when colleagues gaslight someone who points out workplace sexism. Third, oppressive structures can create power inequalities that make certain groups more vulnerable to gaslighting. These connections are important but different from claiming that structures themselves gaslight. The phenomena sometimes labeled "structural gaslighting" - like double binds, hermeneutical injustices, and oppressive social norms - differ from interpersonal gaslighting in crucial ways. Double binds place people in situations where any choice will implicate them in their own oppression. Hermeneutical injustices occur when marginalized groups lack the conceptual resources to articulate aspects of their experience. Oppressive social norms create unjust expectations for members of targeted groups. While all these phenomena have "self-disguising" features and can be psychologically devastating, they differ from gaslighting in their defining harms, loci of responsibility, and mechanisms of action. The harms constitutive of gaslighting must be specified in terms of states of the agent - she questions her sanity, her deliberative capacities are undermined, she loses standing as a deliberator and agent. In contrast, the harms constitutively associated with structural phenomena can be specified without reference to anyone's psychology. The primary locus of responsibility in gaslighting is the gaslighter; in structural phenomena, responsibility is often diffuse. And the means by which gaslighting occurs - interpersonal manipulation over time - differ fundamentally from how structural harms arise. There is, however, another phenomenon in the vicinity that helps explain the temptation to speak of "structural gaslighting" - the experience of confronting ongoing bigotry and discrimination within corrupt systems that offer no accountability or remedy. As Dolly Parton sings in "9 to 5," "It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it." People in such situations face not only discrimination but also the impossibility of having their legitimate reactions recognized as appropriate. Their anger, built up over time, may eventually be expressed in ways that appear disproportionate to those who don't see the pattern, reinforcing stereotypes about "hysterical" women or "angry" Black people. By maintaining distinctions between these phenomena, we gain clarity about their different mechanisms, harms, and potential remedies. Interpersonal gaslighting requires confronting individual manipulation; structural phenomena require systemic change. Collapsing these distinctions risks losing sight of what makes each destructive in its own way, while recognizing their relationships helps us better understand how oppression operates across multiple dimensions.

Chapter 5: The Multidimensional Moral Horror of Gaslighting

The moral wrongs of gaslighting cannot be reduced to a single dimension. Unlike some morally problematic behaviors that can be characterized by a single wrong-making feature, gaslighting involves multiple distinct but interrelated moral wrongs that together constitute its distinctive horror. This multidimensional nature is part of what makes gaslighting so devastating to its targets. As a form of manipulation, gaslighting differs from other manipulative behaviors in morally significant ways. While ordinary manipulation interferes with a person's right to self-govern by inducing them to act in ways they wouldn't reflectively endorse, gaslighting aims to undercut the very capacity for self-governance. The gaslighter places their target in an emotional catch-22: either see yourself as "crazy" (beyond the reach of reason) or as blameworthy for conduct so outrageous it qualifies as "acting crazy." This false dilemma turns the target's own deliberative processes against them, making them complicit in their own undermining. The gaslighter also shows profound disrespect for their target, not as a momentary lapse but as a durable aspect of their attitude toward them. The epistemic wrongs of gaslighting are similarly distinctive. While the gaslighter does undermine their target's knowledge and justified beliefs, reducing gaslighting's wrongs to epistemic injustice misses crucial dimensions of the harm. Gaslighting aims to undermine not just what the target knows but their capacity to know, not just particular beliefs but their ability to form apt beliefs. Moreover, the epistemic and non-epistemic dimensions of gaslighting are inextricably linked - undermining someone's sense of standing to experience appropriate anger, for instance, damages both their epistemic abilities and their sense of moral agency and self-worth. Particularly perverse is how gaslighters weaponize dispositions fundamental to human flourishing. Trust, love, empathy, the presumption of one's own fallibility, and social connections are turned against the target. These dispositions play essential roles in our lives as deliberators, moral agents, and valuing beings. When gaslighters use them as tools to undermine their targets, they engage in a profound form of moral perversity - using that which makes meaningful human life possible to destroy a person's capacity for such a life. This perversity is compounded when gaslighters exploit oppressive social norms, reinforcing broader structures of injustice. Gaslighting also wrongs its targets by making them complicit in their own undoing. While torturers use pain to turn victims against themselves, gaslighters use the target's basic reflective processes and affective dispositions. The difference is morally significant - gaslighting undermines precisely those capacities through which we create lives with meaning, the capacities that constitute our "dear self" in Frankfurt's terms. Being made to collude in the destruction of these capacities represents a distinctive kind of violation. The target of successful gaslighting experiences a form of "existential silencing" that goes beyond ordinary silencing. Not only are they unable to perform speech acts like telling or protesting (as nothing they do will count as such), but they also cannot take their own thoughts and reactions for what they are. Their anger becomes just a "mental storm" rather than a justified response to wrongdoing. This profound alienation from one's own evaluative perspective constitutes yet another dimension of gaslighting's moral horror. Finally, gaslighting causes grave psychological harm, paradigmatically severe clinical depression. This depression should be understood not merely as a clinical condition requiring treatment but as a form of grief - the target is grieving the loss of their independent perspective, their ability to form and maintain their own reactions and perceptions, the relationships that became or turned out to be mere gaslighting relations, and their own largely blameless complicity in all of this. Devastating though it is, this grief can be the first signpost on the road to recovery.

Chapter 6: Trust Destroyed: The Deepest Wound of Gaslighting

Trust occupies a special place in the gaslighter's toolbox and is among the most profoundly damaged aspects of the target's psychology. Understanding the relationship between trust and gaslighting requires recognizing three previously overlooked features of interpersonal trust: its normative framing feature, its shape sensitivity, and its demand for particularity. Trust's normative framing feature means that under appropriate relational conditions, trusting someone makes it possible for them to wrong you in ways that would not qualify as wrongdoings if you didn't trust them. For instance, I might feel betrayed if a friend gossiped about me, but I wouldn't feel betrayed if a stranger did the same - the friendship creates the normative framework in which gossip becomes betrayal. Gaslighters exploit this feature in three ways: by insisting their targets trust them in relationally inappropriate ways, by acting as though relationally appropriate trust is inappropriate, and by setting their targets up to appear untrustworthy so they can act betrayed. Trust's shape sensitivity means our trust is responsive to evidence not just about whether someone is trustworthy but with what they can be trusted. We don't simply stop trusting a chronically late friend; we stop trusting them to be on time while continuing to trust them in other respects. Gaslighters destabilize this feature, creating situations where their targets have no stable sense of with what or whom they can trust. This destabilization leaves targets in an anxiety-ridden state between trust and distrust, desperately seeking some fixed point on which to ground either their trust or mistrust. Trust's demand for particularity refers to the fact that intelligible trust requires being able to specify something in particular with which one trusts a person. If someone claims to trust another but cannot identify anything specific with which they trust them, their claim becomes unintelligible. This feature explains why targets of gaslighting experience occasional moments of clarity amid their confusion. In the movie "Gaslight," Paula suddenly becomes self-possessed when she can give determinate content to her trust, albeit negative content: "I didn't take that picture down, and you violate my trust by claiming I did." These moments release her briefly from the loop of trusting Gregory about nothing in particular, seeking to trust him about something in particular, finding evidence of betrayal that he denies, and so on. The gaslighter's strategy involves destabilizing the target's sense of having any determinate content to their trust - anything in particular they can trust. It's a delicate balance, as the gaslighter must undermine the target in each particular instance while maintaining the trusting relationship that motivates the target to continue seeking something in particular to trust. The resulting confusion, anxiety, and hyperattention gradually erode the target's deliberative abilities, leaving them desperate for relief that can come only through breakdown or total dependence on the gaslighter. In the aftermath of gaslighting, targets often speak of having "lost the ability to trust." But trusting well isn't a power like sight; it's a skill involving affective regulation, interpersonal insight, moral reflection, and the ability to set and revise apt normative expectations. Gaslighting annihilates this skill but leaves the capacity - a capacity we cannot help but exercise, as the nature of human life demands that we trust in some way. Having lost the skill but needing to exercise the capacity, targets often vacillate between utter mistrust and childlike idealized trust. Recovery involves the slow, difficult work of relearning trust's normative dimensions - a psychological counterpart to physical therapy, involving painful rebuilding of damaged capacities. This process reminds us that although gaslighting represents a profound violation of trust that damages our ability to trust well, there remains a road back. With appropriate support, targets can gradually rebuild their trust skills, reclaiming their capacity for meaningful interpersonal connection and independent agency.

Summary

The destructive power of gaslighting lies in its multidimensional assault on the foundations of human agency and connection. Unlike other forms of manipulation that merely influence specific beliefs or behaviors, gaslighting targets the very capacities that make us moral and epistemic agents - our ability to trust our perceptions, form justified beliefs, experience appropriate emotions, and see ourselves as having standing in a community of moral equals. What makes this form of psychological manipulation particularly insidious is how it turns our most fundamental human capacities against us, weaponizing trust, love, empathy, and our recognition of our own fallibility to undermine our sense of ourselves as independent deliberators and agents. The insights gained from analyzing gaslighting extend far beyond understanding this particular form of abuse. By examining how gaslighters exploit the normative dimensions of trust, we gain a richer understanding of trust itself - how it frames our interpersonal relationships, how it responds to evidence, and how it requires specificity to remain intelligible. Similarly, gaslighting illuminates the intimate connections between our epistemic and moral capacities, showing how undermining one inevitably damages the other. For anyone interested in the nature of human agency, interpersonal relationships, or the psychological dimensions of morality, understanding gaslighting provides a unique window into these fundamental aspects of our shared humanity, while simultaneously helping us recognize and resist one of the most destructive forms of psychological manipulation.

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Kate Abramson

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