Thoughts on Gaslighting

Introduction

Some conservative commentators, particularly in the MAGA base, have recently expressed outrage over the lack of transparency surrounding the Epstein files. On an episode of The Daily Show that aired on July 15th, one of the media pundits said of President Trump, "I can't reconcile this Donald Trump with the Trump that we're seeing right now, the Trump that is gaslighting the public right now."

This post explores how gaslighting operates in political, media, and interpersonal contexts drawing insights from Stephanie Moulton Sarkis’s book Gaslighting (2018).

Conceptual Metaphor Theory

The inspiration for this post comes from many interactions with people who use the term gaslighting, and many agree that its meaning seems hard to pin down exactly. Who's doing it to who for example? What are some concrete examples that everyone can objectively point to and say, "That's gaslighting!"? Consider the view of the concept of gaslighting from a conceptual metaphor perspective (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). When gas is lit, what happens? An explosion as is shown in Hollywood movies? No. It simply burns. But it burns off as fuel and in a combustion engine will pump the pistons up and down spinning the motor. However, this gaslighting is taken from our shared experience with the problem of using fracking gas and pollution in our water. As Documentaries such as GasLand (2010) has shown, many people over the last twenty years have noticed that natural gas in drinking water can ignite right at the tap. Does it explode? No. It simply burns.

According to conceptual metaphor theory, we use our bodily experiences with concrete concepts to map meaning onto abstract concepts through language. So if our experiential basis for the abstract concept of gaslighting is from the physical action of lighting a tap that as a result burns, then that meaning is mentally simulated when we talk about one person gaslighting another. For example, the action involved in lighting someone up who perhaps is known to be flammable, and watching them burn.

Interpersonal relationships

What is a toxic relationship? Well, if natural gas is a pollutant of a shared supply of a necessary resource, we can extend the metaphor from the physical domain to the interpersonal domain. For example, a relationship may have a person who has a bad reputation and is particularly flammable. Taking the next step to the action of setting him or her aflame is what is meant by gaslighting. In this section, I discuss several examples of gaslighting in social relationships.

Sarkis (2018) makes a good argument for how the manipulator will turn it around on the person by making it seem like they are the victim of being abused instead of the person actually doing it in the chapter, "Is it me, or is it you making me think it's me." Psychological abuse occurs in this case, because it confuses the mind of the person that is being gaslit. For example, getting in an argument about what a spouse does not remember and saying, "Well of course. You never remember what we talked about." without any prompt or help with recalling the conversation. It is also emotionally abusive, because then the gaslighter guilts the spouse into apologizing for not listening, and pressures them to atone for imagined inadequacies.

In cases where a partner must share custody of a child with a gaslighter, the child could be used to hurt the spouse by being late with pick-ups and drop-offs, be non-committal with the schedule of visitation, or neglect any responsibilities as a parent completely. On the other end of the life spectrum, family members may find themselves the victims of a gas-lighting guardian of an aging Father. If he is in cognitive decline due to Parkinson's, Dementia, or Alzheimer's it is even easier for a gas-lighting sibling to become the favorite of the family, taking over as Power of Attorney, and changing the distribution of the inheritance. In both of these cases involving family, the gaslighter does not target the innocent child or the kindly old grandpa directly; instead, they become collateral victims in an attempt to hurt other family members.

Is defamation gaslighting?

Given these examples of psychological and emotional abuse, it should be clearer as to what the concept of gaslighting means. Sometimes, however, it is important to use examples of the concept in other arenas to gain perspective. Next, I will look at the case of Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard, introduce the concepts of feigning and malingering, and scale up from interpersonal dynamics to the case of someone being gaslit on social media. When it comes to claims of domestic abuse in legal settings, defamation is powerful fuel.

Toxic gossip with no factual basis can serve as a form of gaslighting, especially when it damages someone’s reputation through defamation. It is simply rumor and damages the person's reputation. In the case of Depp v. Heard, Heard’s legal team argued that emotional abuse from defamation caused Heard's resulting Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Attorneys and an expert witness used the concepts of malingering and feigning to qualify Heard’s mental state. Malingering is an exaggeration of one's symptoms with an intent to deceive for financial gain, social influence, or some other type of personal gain. Whereas, feigning is an act of extreme exaggeration. In Depp v. Heard, forensic psychologist Dr. Shannon Curry testified that Heard had exaggerated responses, but not per se as malingering, which is considered a form of deception and not a resulting symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She said, "Actually that was something unique when [Heard] completed objective broadband measures where the questions... you don't know what the questions are getting at they seem completely random, she raised scores that indicated that she was trying to minimize any mental issues and appear completely free of pathology. When she took tests that asked questions that were specific to trauma, that's when you'd see these extreme exaggerations." So here Dr. Curry suggests that on questions about her mental health that seem random, she would play them down, whereas questions about her trauma were exaggerated. It is difficult, however, to argue that she intended to deceive from this analysis.

When the Attorney for Heard asked Dr. Curry whether the profile was considered malingering, she said, "The MMPI 2 profile... it's specific to how she approached this test, and you're correct for this test it was a defensive profile not an exaggerated profile." Thus, the profile question is being argued as exaggeration and not malingering, which could indicate a sign of abuse due to defamatory comments made by Depp. Dr. Curry argued that Heard exaggerated her symptoms, which she classified as feigning rather than malingering, implying a pattern of distortion that may align with forms of emotional manipulation, but not necessarily with intentional deceit.

Under redirect by Depp's attorney he asked for Dr. Curry to further clarify the distinction between malingering and feigning. She responds, "Malingering is a term that most psychologists... we try to be careful of it, because it indicates an intent for secondary gain. I prefer feigning which you had brought up earlier because it indicates that somebody is intentionally exaggerating, but I don't know necessarily why. So I think that's a more accurate term in general. On the MMPI 2 yes there was no exaggerated profile. I also gave her the CAPS 5. I don't know if you'll remember, but that is the clinician-administered PTSD scale consistent with the DSM-V, and on that there were signs of gross exaggeration. I also looked at the test results that were provided by Dr. Hughes and on an objective test of trauma there is a scale specific to intentional exaggeration on that test, and Miss Heard was in the 98th profile... 98th percentile." Dr. Curry cited these additional tests as evidence that Heard deliberately exaggerated her symptoms, more in line with what she considered feigning and not malingering. This supports the view that she exaggerated without intending to deceive the administrators of the diagnostic tests for secondary gain.

Gaslighting in mass communication

Now that we have several examples of gaslighting from interpersonal situations, to defamation on social media between individuals, let's scale up to mass communication. A politician can gaslight their constituents, the population of their country, or the flame could travel internationally. Going back to the example of President Trump not releasing the Epstein files, consider how it could be seen as gaslighting the general population, but mostly the MAGA base.

Sarkis (2018) wrote that in mass communication more authoritarian-leaning leaders say things on the campaign trail when they intend to do something else after they are elected. Campaign promises when broken hurt the public's trust in the candidate turned elected official. In the case of the Jeff Epstein files, President Trump campaigned on releasing the files, but after he was elected, he walked back that promise. In the words of the media pundit in my first example from The Daily Show, "I can't reconcile ... the Trump that is gaslighting the public right now." Creating a sense of irreconcilable contradiction between promises and actions induces confusion, and constitutes a form of psychological manipulation, not unlike the abuse targeted at a loved one to cause confusion, but here it is aimed at the general population.

Conclusion

Through a process of conceptual metaphor analysis to define gaslighting, and providing examples from interpersonal relationships and later from mass communication, I have argued that the abstract concept of gaslighting is given its meaning via our shared experiential basis in concrete terms such as lighting a toxic tap on fire. This raises implications for the general public on how the breaking of campaign promises could affect their psychological and emotional well being. President Trump’s failure to follow through may not cause an immediate eruption, but it may fuel a slow, simmering disillusionment within his base.

References

Fox, J. (Director). (2010). Gasland [Film]. HBO Documentary Films.

Lakoff, G. & Johnson, R. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press.

Sarkis, S. M. (2018). Gaslighting: Recognize manipulative and emotionally abusive people - and break free. Da Capo Press. New York, NY.