Gaslighting is the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one’s own advantage. Gaslighting is an emotionally abusive tactic that makes another person question their own sanity and perception of reality. Specifically, it is the psychological manipulation of another person into doubting their own perceptions, experiences or understanding of events. The abuser attempts to sow self-doubt and confusion in their victim’s mind. Victims of gaslighting are deliberately and systematically fed false information that leads them to question what they know to be true, often about themselves. They may end up doubting their memory, their perception, and even their sanity. Typically, gaslighters are seeking to gain power and control over the other person, by distorting reality and forcing them to question their own judgment and intuition.
Gaslighting is a particularly malevolent form of psychological warfare, most often deployed in interpersonal relationships by what the Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg called “malignant narcissists.” The concept of the malignant narcissist is closely related to Dr. Robert Hare’s concept of the psychopath.
The emotional abuser might say things like: "I never said that you must be losing it, why are you paranoid"; "You're going crazy"; "You’re too sensitive”; "You’re overreacting”. They will twist your words to fit into their narrative or changing the subject to draw attention from the truth. They will tell you how you should feel, which is a psychological tactic of mind-control.
Toxic abusers cause confusion and twist communications. The toxic abuser might also do things like hiding car keys, a cell phone or simply ignore you. Many victims doubt themselves and continually apologize for disagreeing or upsetting the manipulator. The toxic abuser wants to keep their victim in a constant state of insecurity, doubt and fear.
Gaslighting is a tactic that is used by manipulators, social predators, emotional abusers, bullies and those with narcissistic personality disorder. The main goal of gaslighting is to confuse, coerce and emotionally manipulate the victim into abandoning their own perception of reality and accepting whatever is the new “reality” imposed on them; ultimately, it is to completely destroy their ability to trust their own perception, emotions, reasoning and memory of historical events, and render them utterly dependent for their reality on the gaslighter.
Gaslighting happens every day, out of the spotlight of the media, in countless personal and professional relationships. In order to effectively gaslight someone, you have be in a position of authority or wield some other form of power over them. They have to need something vital from you: sustenance, safety, financial security, community, career advancement, love.
The reason the New Normal authorities have been able to gaslight the masses so effectively is that most of the masses do need something from them … a job, food, shelter, money, security, status, their friends, a relationship, or whatever it is they’re not willing to risk by challenging those in power and their lies. Gaslighters, cultists, and power freaks, generally, know this. It is what they depend on, your unwillingness to live without whatever it is. They zero in on it and threaten you with the loss of it (sometimes consciously, sometimes just intuitively).
Gaslighting won’t work if you are willing to give up whatever the gaslighter is threatening to take from you (or stop giving you, as the case may be), but you have to be willing to actually lose it, because you will be punished for defending yourself, for not surrendering your autonomy and integrity, and conforming to the “reality” of the cult, or the abusive relationship, or the totalitarian system.