Gaslighting involves one person (or sometimes a group of persons),

the victimizer (who tries to impose his or her judgment on a second person, a
victim), and a second person, the victim. This imposition is carried out by the
"transfer," via projective identification,
of disturbing unconscious contents from the victimizer to the victim. Gaslighting
often evokes disturbing emotions, low self-esteem,
and cognitive dyscontrol by causing the individual to question his
own abilities for thinking, perceiving, and reality testing. Along
34 INTERPERSONAL CONTROL AND INDOCTRINATION METHODS
with the emergence of self-doubt and diminished self-esteem there
also may develop confusion, anxiety, depression, and in a few cases,
psychosis.
As a form of projective identification, gaslighting serves a
defensive function. The defenses of denial and projection occur
first, and they are followed by some interpersonal manipulation
that is an enactment of the subject's wish to control the other person. Some
psychic content which is denied as belonging to the self
is projected on to another person. The victimizer's wish to control the object is
first actualized when he or she is able to manipulate the object in such a way (as,
for example, by shaming him)
that the object begins to doubt his own judgment. After the victim loses confidence
in his mental capacities, he becomes an easy
prey for the victimizer's need to direct the victim's cognition, feeling state, and
overt behavior.
In my view, gaslighting is the common denominator of a variety of different
psychological techniques and manipulations both
individuals and groups have used unconsciously as well as consciously for attaining
control and domination over other individuals' psychic functioning. Gaslighting is
a major element in many
of the brainwashing and indoctrination techniques employed, by
totalitarian fascist and communist regimes in their management
of both political prisoners and prisoners of war. The psychological and physical
methods used for brainwashing or indoctrination
have as their goal the impairment or destruction of certain mental functions and
beliefs of the individual so that the victim will
submit to his or her persecutors.
To win converts and followers, fundamentalist religious groups,
cults, encounter groups, and large-group awareness training make
extensive use of gaslighting and other brainwashing techniques
(Singer 1995).
Techniques used for controlling and disrupting another person's mental functioning
should be distinguished from techniques
used for controlling and shaping another person's outward behavior. For example,
some authoritarian governments try to control,
through a variety of methods, what their citizens do. Their aim is
ON GASLIGHTING 35
to proscribe certain kinds of overt actions, and they do not attempt
to systematically compel their citizens to think or feel in any prescribed way. In
contrast, totalitarian regimes (such as Germany
during Hitler's regime and Russia headed by Stalin) try to rigorously direct and
control what their citizens feel and think, as well
as what they do.
Psychological methods such as gaslighting used by totalitarian
regimes may be supplemented and enhanced by physical means
such as sleep deprivation, torture, psychotropic drugs, sensory
isolation, and solitary confinement.
Studies of individuals and groups subjected to brainwashing
show how the victims are first led to doubt or even reject their own
judgments at the same time that they are pressured to follow and
believe what their victimizer wants them to believe.
As I hope to demonstrate in the following vignettes, the unconscious gaslighting
carried out by psychoanalytic therapists and
others is a part of a complex interpersonal manipulative interaction in which the
gaslighter tries to cause the victim to doubt his
perceptions and judgments at the same time that he or she attempts
to have the patient accept the therapist's judgments.