Gas lighting

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In psychology, gaslighting ( compound from English gas and lighting , German : 'gas lighting') is a form of psychological violence or abuse with which victims are deliberately disoriented , manipulated and deeply insecure and their reality and self-confidence gradually deform or . gets destroyed.

The term originally comes from the title of the 1938 play Gas Light by the British playwright Patrick Hamilton , in which this practice was first described and discussed. The subject became world famous through the film The House of Lady Alquist , with Ingrid Bergman in the lead role. The term has also been used colloquially and as a technical psychological term since the 1960s to describe efforts to manipulate one's perception of reality. The perpetrators are also known as gas lighters .

course

The victim's perception of reality is called into question. This does not happen permanently, but repeatedly and over a long period of time by one or more people. This can happen through denial of real existing things, behaviors or events, more rarely through a conscious staging of them. A basic requirement is that the perpetrator and the victim are in a relationship of trust, i.e. that the victim trusts the perpetrator and his manipulative statements. Over time, victims begin to doubt their memory, perception, and reason. There is no reason to have the manipulative statements checked by a third party because the victim trusts the perpetrator.

It is particularly perfidious when perpetrators also manipulate people from the social environment of the victim and abuse them to confirm the point of view or the statements of the perpetrator or also to question the victim's perceptions and thus unconsciously participate in the "staging" of the perpetrator. As a result, the victim's self-confidence can often be largely destroyed within a short period of time and social isolation can be achieved.

Not all perpetrators are aware of the mechanisms of the method and its designation as gas lighting. This can be assumed if it takes place in the context of disease processes, as in people with antisocial , narcissistic or psychopathic personality disorder . Beyond behavior in the context of illnesses, a targeted application is assumed in most cases. The offender's motive is to exercise power over the victim.

There is literature on how to identify and intimidate workers with personality disorder using gaslighting. Gaslighting is also often used by perpetrators in the area of child sexual abuse (but also in other forms of abuse such as emotional abuse), both to manipulate the victims during the crime and to manipulate their memories of the crime in a targeted manner and / or afterwards to establish a relationship of dependency.

Similar methods can e.g. B. in totalitarian regimes and sects as a potent means in the context of brainwashing , " decomposition " ( Stasi ), manipulation and indoctrination use and the victim u. a. lead to profound and lasting, in some cases existential, insecurity and confusion, to weakening and damage to self-confidence , personality and resilience, to causing states of fear and panic to delusions and psychotic states.

Examples

Gaslighting often works according to a similar scheme and with similar techniques:

  • denying authorization or reinterpreting the victim's feelings,
  • claim that the victim did or said something but cannot remember it himself,
  • claiming or denying having done or said something specific yourself,
  • deny that a particular event took place,
  • manipulating things in the apartment or around the victim (e.g. placing objects in unusual places, hiding everyday objects or documents, changing small things in the apartment in the victim's absence, switching on the radio, not locking the apartment door properly, the victim's car re-park etc.) and accuse the victim of being scattered or disorganized,
  • accuse the victim of incorrect perception of reality or incorrect assessment of reality,
  • blaming the victim for arguments, difficulties in the relationship, failure of friendships, problems at work or life problems, etc.,
  • turn the words around in the victim's mouth or put words in his mouth,
  • accuse the victim of inappropriate behavior, body language or clothing,
  • persuade the victim that the victim cannot do something, is not good enough, is unqualified,
  • instrumentalize other people in the vicinity of the victim (possibly also through manipulation) in a "staging", for example induce them to take sides in discussions for themselves or against the victim or to confirm statements,
  • promote the social isolation of the victim (or his dependency or bond with the perpetrator), e.g. by undermining the victim's relationship of trust with friends and relatives,
  • Show your true face as a gaslighter to the victim, but not to other people or in society.

TV shows with a hidden camera such as B. Do you understand fun? occasionally use gaslighting for the production of their joke films, for example in The Confused Painter . A completely healthy house painter, who is fooled into thinking wrongly about color and shape by the show's decoys , is convinced “I have to go to the hospital” after just a few minutes.

Gaslighting is also described in the films The Black Mirror , The Girl on the Train and The Truman Show .

Psychological consequences

The victims of gaslighting often even suffer complex, severe ( chronic, florid or progressive ) mental illnesses. They fall into deep depression , anxiety , panic or delusional states and can also develop a post-traumatic stress disorder or dissociative disorder and / or their entire personality changes (e.g. to a self-insecure-avoiding personality disorder ) because of the perpetrator repeatedly nurtured self-doubt . It can even happen that the victim thinks: "I have gone completely insane " and has the feeling that they are no longer in control of their own life or have lost their mind. Further concomitant illnesses, including physical , psychosomatic ones, are possible.

A special challenge in the therapy of the victims is that the manipulation pattern of the gaslighting can only be recognized after a certain distance. It can take years or decades for a victim to understand that it was not the person who did something wrong or was wrong with, but that it is or has been manipulated by another person and the consequences emotionally processed. It can often take a lot of time and therapeutic support for the victim to stabilize psychologically and to regain his or her previous self - confidence .

In politics

In a comment published in Spiegel in March 2017 , the journalist Marc Pitzke classifies the US President Donald Trump's handling of facts as gas lighting.

Trump's advisor Kellyanne Conway's portrayal of untruths has also been interpreted as gaslighting. The phrase “ alternative facts ” created by her was voted the unword of the year 2017 in both Germany and Austria .

On 18 April 2019 President's son called Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter the other way around dealing with many media Trumps so-called Russian affair than gas lighting.

Origin of name

The gaslighting method is named after the play Gas Light by the British author Patrick Hamilton , which became known worldwide through his film adaptations Gaslight and Lady Alquist 's House . In the play, the protagonist manipulates his wife over a long period of time by claiming not to see things that she perceives, including the light of a flickering gas lantern. Finally, the woman doubts her own perception and almost goes mad before the manipulation is finally revealed. Although plays and films are known under different titles in German-speaking countries, the English name of the manipulation method also prevailed in German.

literature

  • Kathryn Portnow: Dialogues of doubt: The Psychology of Selbstzweifelns and emotional gas lights in adult women and men (original title: Dialogues of Doubt. The Psychology of Self-Doubt and Emotional Gas Lighting in Adult Women and Men ) Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1996. Limited Book preview on books.google.com (English), dissertation.
  • Victor Santoro: Gaslighting: How to drive your enemies crazy . Loompanics Unlimited, Port Townsend WA (USA) 1994, ISBN 978-1-55950-113-2
  • Robin Stern: The gaslight effect: how to spot and survive the hidden manipulations other people use to control your life . Preface by Naomi Wolf . Morgan Road Books, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-7679-2445-0 , here excerpts online on Google Books

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ AJ Larner: A Dictionary of Neurological Signs . (2016), Springer Verlag, ISBN 3-319-29821-6 , p. 139.
  2. ↑ a b c “Gaslighting” strategy: How conscious manipulation of reality makes people sick. World - Category: Science, February 3, 2017.
  3. ↑ a b c d Sandra Berthaler: Psychological terror in relationships: Manipulation to the point of madness: This is how "gas lighters" abuse their victims. FOCUS Online from November 19, 2017.
  4. ↑ a b Kira Cossa: Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers: Gaslighting. Narzissmus.org , accessed February 2, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b c d Gaslighting is subtle psychological abuse In: Jetzt , November 5, 2016, accessed November 7, 2016
  6. ^ G. King III: Narcissism and effective crisis management: A review of potential problems and pitfalls. (2007), Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management 15.4: 183-193.
  7. ↑ Roy Lubit: The long-term organizational impact of destructively narcissistic managers. Academy of Management Perspectives, 16.1 (2002), pp. 127-138.
  8. ↑ Florence Rush .: The best-kept secret: sexual abuse of children. 1st ed., 9th print. Human Services Institute, Bradenton, Fla. 1992, ISBN 0-8306-3907-1 .
  9. ↑ Bärbel Wardetzki: Gaslighting: The complete uncertainty - "I thought I was going crazy". Lea, December 27, 2016
  10. ↑ Do you understand fun? ( ARD ): The Confused Painter - Part 1 Part 2 In: Youtube , April 12, 2014, accessed on November 28, 2016
  11. ^ Westworld, The Truman Show, and Gaslighting filmschoolrejects, December 20, 2016
  12. ↑ a b Melanie Wolfmeier: An interview about gaslighting . In: Now , November 5, 2016, accessed November 7, 2016.
  13. ↑ Julia Naue: When others manipulate our perception. In: Badische Zeitung of February 6, 2017.
  14. ↑ Marc Pitzke : In the mirror cabinet of lies. Der Spiegel , March 21, 2017, accessed on March 21, 2017 .
  15. ↑ “Alternative facts” is a bad word of the year 2017. In: Der Standard , January 16, 2016, accessed on the same day.
  16. ↑ Someone bought the 'alternative facts' website and did something utterly perfect with it . In: The Independent . January 31, 2017 ( independent.co.uk [accessed February 23, 2017]).
  17. ↑ Donald Trump Jr .: A reminder for @CNN and the rest of those in the mainstream media gaslighting. Twitter , April 18, 2019, accessed April 19, 2019 .