At a social gathering, a woman becomes inexplicably panicked and hysterical; her soothing husband whisks her away from the public spectacle. To the disinterested onlookers she seems an emotional wreck, he a noble protector. They respect his chivalry, perhaps pity him a little. Safely back home, his exasperation pours out, ‘If I could only get inside that brain of yours and understand what makes you do these crazy, twisted things!’ However, we know what his wife does not even suspect: that he himself has slowly planted the seeds of her anguish and self-doubt and is plotting to drive her out of her mind.
The scene comes from the 1944 Ingrid Bergman film, Gaslight, the second screen adaptation of an earlier play. In it, Bergman’s character Paula is slowly manipulated by her husband into believing she is losing her mind. He moves objects around the house to confuse her, steals her possessions while claiming she has lost them, and his mysterious, secret ventures into the attic cause the gas lights to flicker and dim, which only Paula ever sees, causing her to doubt her own sanity. The title of the film has thus lent itself to this form of psychological abuse, ‘gaslighting’.
Essentially, gaslighting is a term used within psychology to describe the psychological abuse that results when one person attempts to convince another that they are mad. In the film, the viewer is fully aware that Paula is not insane and that her husband is up to no good. However, this is not apparent to the people around her, unable to see what is going on behind closed doors at home. Indeed, when she is out and about her husband often plays a trick or two so that he can ascribe her confusion, stress, and later hysteria to witnesses as part of a tragic descent into insanity. Paula herself is trusting and cannot understand what is happening.
As the film progresses and her imagined ‘condition’ deteriorates, her husband informs her that two psychiatrists will be coming to review her so they can take her away to receive the ‘help’ she needs – i.e. to put her away for life in an asylum. Fortunately, this being Hollywood, and Ingrid Bergman to boot, a handsome and observant detective suspicious of what is going on arrives in the nick of time before she can be institutionalised. The question is, though, what would have happened if the doctors had got there first? Would they have diagnosed Paula as mad, or is there a chance they might have realised she was the victim of a campaign of emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of the man she thought loved her?
Having myself managed to escape from a psychologically abusive relationship, unfortunately only after years of ‘treatment’ within the psychiatric system, I would argue strongly that they would almost certainly not have recognised the gaslighting. Psychiatrists, with the onus they put on diagnostic labels rather than discovering the root causes of distress, have little chance of spotting when the behaviour is the result of others’ abuse. My partner, too, was able to persuade both me and those around me that I was mad, that I lacked insight, and that my worries (including about him) were manifestations of my ‘paranoid delusions’.
It began when I tried to leave him for the first time. Having no family to turn to I had nowhere to go, and the stress of it all caused me to break down. My partner took me to a doctor. I was mainly exhausted after weeks of heavy drinking and a lack of sleep, but the GP referred me to a psychiatrist. I see how this could happen: the NHS’s guidance on what to look out for as indicators of psychosis includes: hallucinations; delusions; confused and disturbed thoughts; and lack of insight and self-awareness*. As it turns out, the same might reasonably be expected to result from an unhealthy combination of insomnia, inebriation and constant denigration. Funnily enough, these are all traits a doctor would have seen in Paula too.
The gaslighting I experienced gathered pace once I started treatment within the psychiatric system. My partner positioned himself as my carer and my friends would often tell me that, considering my ‘condition’, I should be grateful to have someone around so dedicated to my wellbeing. That condition was never doubted by anyone. My partner escorted me to psychiatric appointments, where the professionals listened sympathetically to him, valuing his sane perspective. He would also counsel me that a major problem I had was a lack of insight and that he could help me to see things correctly. So much control did he have over me and my so-called illness that he even took responsibility for monitoring the anti-psychotic drugs I was taking. He ensured I took them, except on the nights he wanted me to join him out drinking; on these occasions he would generously allow me a night off the pills. When I accused him of trying to be my doctor he would get angry and I would let it be – after all, no one else I knew would consider that the problem might be anything outside of my own biology. If I ever tried, again, to leave him he would tell my friends I was having a relapse, and this was accepted by all, again leaving me nowhere to go for support.
It took me a long time to realise that I was being gaslighted. In fact, I had no word to describe the experience until years after I had finally escaped him, when I came across the term by chance. What is worse, whenever I talk about my past relationship now with friends in my new life, I am horrified to discover how common manipulative relationships are. Fortunately, most who have shared their experiences with me had families who supported them in getting away. I didn’t. The only people I could turn to for help were psychiatrists because in the UK the medical system is where you are sent with ‘symptoms’ like mine. I can never go back and prove I was gaslighted so I am stuck with a psychiatric diagnosis to this day. There is a laughable idea that mental health conditions are about susceptibility, that yes, our experiences impact upon our minds, but not everyone reacts psychotically so it is alright to label those who do as having some underlying chemical imbalance. Yet who could experience the level of control by a partner that I did – or the trauma Paula suffers in the film – without emerging traumatised?
So what can be done about the problem? The phenomenon of gaslighting has become much better known recently, and this is progress. Victims need a word to describe what is being done to them, to know it is wrong and that they can escape it. Also, popularising the term hopefully means more people seeing through the abuser’s disguise and providing support for the victim. This would require a wider awareness of the fact that diagnostic labels are not scientifically validated and are, at best, subjective opinions of doctors who do not see the patient in the reality of their surrounding world. Meanwhile, the system has to change to prevent the recurrence of what happened to me. ‘Controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship’ is now a crime in England and Wales carrying a prison sentence. The healthcare system needs to catch up; psychiatrists must stop being blind to anything but the diagnostic labels that actively abetted my partner in his abuse, and realise that severe and long-term psychological fallout can be caused by various traumatic abuses committed behind closed doors, not just the obvious ones.
The problem is not exclusively one that affects women, but researchers acknowledge a gendered aspect to gaslighting given how often in society a woman’s responses to situations are deemed irrational and over-emotional, while it is assumed that men have a monopoly on reason. For a woman who was never listened to when it mattered most, it is now almost impossible to imagine getting a psychiatrist to believe my story and right the wrong of labelling me, a label that has caused so many problems in my life even after I got away from my abusive relationship. Essentially, what the psychiatric field needs to do is listen, and not only that but to hear and actually believe people’s experiences.
I still have no idea whether my partner’s manipulation was deliberate or if he genuinely believed I was ill. Paula’s murderous husband in Gaslight is clearly evil to the core, but either way the outcome is the same: the manipulation causes intense suffering and damage. Paula’s husband eventually gets his comeuppance. There is no such fairy tale for many real life victims who are left to try and prove their sanity in the face of something so perniciously abusive as gaslighting.
* Editor’s note: At the time of writing this blog, online NHS guidance identified four major indicators of psychosis including ‘lack of insight and self-awareness’. This information was updated in December 2019 to limit the major symptoms to hallucinations, delusions and confused or disturbed thoughts.
Thank you for writing a very helpful article. I’m in a very difficult predicament at the moment, being gaslighted by my psychiatrist, and it’s not the first time that it’s happened.
I want to ask, apart from trying to get help from an advocate, is there anyone else I can go to for support?
I have not come by this website by any luck or chance – I found it looking for answers. I realize there are many people that do really need real help and walk a fine line will illness here. I empathize with all people regardless of their situations. My story would rival the famous “Gaslight” movie.
This is the absolute worst of humanity I am so serious – when done deliberately and even accidently it must be the worst. I am God loving person and very kind in my heart – thats what made me vulnerable to it and its perpetrators.
I can’t even begin to tell my story – I invoved some people of trust and power over me and I am a very tough spirit myself. In retrospect driven by a mix of jealousy, retaliation, control and revenge and I do believe it was entertaining to them too.
My gaslighter and the other individuals people did it to me for 20 years – slow cooked me with the confusion and reality lies. You have no idea. Lock doors unlocked, thefts in the house. I finally took my own action, jumped to the nation’s top hospital and Dr against my parters and local Drs will – made them all so furrious, spitting angery I have photos of their faces from hell when I finally exposed it. Their seductive feeding me lies and their damn meds vanished – narrcassisim exposed. My gut knew it all alone this was sadistic game and lie put on me at a weak moment in my life. Simply the worst of humanity. The biggest clue is it just happened around them and they used circular reasoning to dismiss and divert from facts. Its somebody you believe and TRUST – destroying what you believe is real.
I am a forgiving God loving person. They are lucky I am. They dont derseve the forgiveness I give. I do really wish them luck in the next world which I honestly doubt they will get.
Yes – the most hanis part of this awful thing is the Docs are in fact left confused by it entirely to this day – no trail left behind for them to see. It a perfect moronic crime taught by devil Satan himself.
If you caught in this get the hell out – recognize you are in a very bad situation.
By the way I did see “Gaslight” as a kid and this is what got me looking into it. They never had me entirely fooled. I even ordered materials on it. When I exposed the lie with the nations top Dr. My partner of 40 years fled the marriage – stripped my house of many belongings while I had gone for few hours doing charity work. Stunned is all I can say – My very supportive family in total disbelieve I was living with this all these years – but they did sense it.
my youngest brother has been Gaslighting me for 39 years, it’s now worse since our Mother died, I am now engaged to lovely man. My brother is a train driver who was involved in a fatal accident nearly 5 years ago, the young man jumped over the level crossing barriers and died instantly. I was born with cerebral AVMs and had major brain surgery in 1988, I am prone to severe headaches, not the kind that responds to Anadin. In March I accidentally hit my head, got a black eye but because of Covid did not get a GP appointment or attend A & E, I was suddenly woken by the most severe intense headache in my life, rushed to Majors who did a CT scan, they saw minor changes and suspected a blood clot but failed to give me any strong painkillers. My brother did not know I was in Hospital, he had approached a Solicitor to get a new will drafted by my 93 year old father, in March, then found they realised Dad did not understand what he was doing, I had no respite from this headache and after 8 days went for a third time to A & E when at last they put me on CoCodamol. except that my brother had made a report to Mental Health services as my nearest relative, I had been warned that if the CoCodamol (15/500) was not effective I would have to be admitted to an acute bed, I went back to A & E as directed, only to be attacked by 2 Mental Health doctors and given a chemical cosh while held down by 4 security guards. this was recorded by the Hospital, I was admitted to the acute beds ED but abducted the next day and driven to Norfolk, the NHS trust concerned thought I was making this up, so put this down to mental ill health. The Solicitor then met with my Dad again and the new will was done while I was locked away, nobody believed me about the chemical cosh incident even though they did a body map of the bruises, and when I told them I believed my brothers were trying to get a new will written, this also was dismissed as delusional. I worked as a mortgage protection and equity release adviser, and had arranged for a colleague to service my client base as soon as started this severe headache, but nobody phoned my company, my assertions were dismissed as lack of insight and delusions of grandeur. Now I have it in writing that the injection being held down did happen from the Hospital, but the mental health lot are still denying it ever happened, my section was dated a day before I had any interaction with a Mental health doctor, and the report written up by someone who had never met or spoken to me before. My brother added to his wild assertions that I was driving in sunglasses at 4am, not realising my car was in bits at my local Garage, there were no incidents of behaviour that was a risk to myself or others, It can now be proved that everything I stated which was alleged to be delusions and the favourite “lack of insight” was true, I found the new will and letter from the Solicitors just before Christmas. Needless to say I am taking this to the Ombusdman and CQC, why is adult sibling alienation not discussed more widely ?
Lack of insight, the NHS trust recorded two Doctors rushing into A and E injecting me with a chemical cosh double jab of Dopamine, I had the most awful headache caused by a blood clot in the brain, having accidentally hit my head some six weeks earlier, they failed to diagnose it correctly and left me for 8 days with no pain relief, when they started me on CoCodamol,
My youngest brother made a report as my nearest relative and was taken seriously, I had unknown to him hit my head and as a result had a blood clot in my brain, at the time he made the report
Yes it was done to me, and I survived. After 15 years I finally realised my mother likely has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The main symptoms were:
* use of denial / lies as a means of dealing with problems
* inability to have a coherent argument with her (she would bring up childhood problems that are completely unrelated to the subject at hand)
* minimalization and trivialization of problems you are facing (this makes you get even more upset and angry)
* childish behaviors like repeatedly standing behind the door to overhear your conversations with other family members and denying it every time.
* trying to control every step of my life during childhood
At first when she did this to me I was thinking it was me and some kind of psychiatric issue I was suffering from. And I tended to give her the benefit of the doubt at first, thinking that it was me that was paranoid. But in the end, no it was not me.
She would even manipulate siblings to take part in the abuse as well. So it was the whole family turned against me (who was outspoken about the family abuse).
Good thing is that I have recordings of her (recent) behavior, including her crazy way of arguing.
I think it’s important that if you are a victim of such treatment that you mention to your GP or Psychiatrist that it’s possible the perpetrator has an extremely serious personality disorder – and it is that that is causing the problem, not a mental illness in yourself.
One of my GPs who I had *did* believe me when I mentioned it was psychological abuse, and so did one Psychiatrist, so it’s not all totally bleak.
Remember if it’s been going on for your whole life it is very unlikely for that to be Psychosis.
I feel sorry for everyone who has to go through what I did, it is like you have the whole world against you. You wouldn’t expect such things to happen here in the UK, it’s something you would expect in North Korea or the Soviet Union.
But yes, it does happen.
One thing I didn’t mention is that I’m actually a very stable person, I just get very upset when they abuse me. It takes an enormous amount of stress for me to actually break down. That’s only happened once or twice in all my life.
Some people are not quite so resilient, so they can come down with an acute psychiatric condition. And it would be difficult to tell if it’s the psychiatric condition or the abuse that’s causing the problem.
The sheer terror I had in my late teens as my mother was gaslighting me, denying that the abuse had ever happened.
I was absolutely utterly horrified of being put in a mental hospital, with my mother putting on her ‘nice’ mask and saying “we’re so concerned for him” or “what has happened to him”. And all the doctors believing her, instead of me. With my siblings chipping in and denying it as well.
She was even rehearsing the denial on the trip to the GP. She would talk to herself “I don’t know what you’re talking about”, repeatedly. Like a robot. Not just during the trip but whenever I brought the subject up.
One of her other tactics is to accuse you of exactly the same thing you are accusing her of. If I said “you will go to hell for what you did”, she would say exactly the same back to me. Everything was mirrored back at me – that is a very common occurrence in people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
She would also completely keep me in the dark about what was going on. Denying and lying repeatedly. Covering up the problem.
However, this was only happening at home – not anywhere else in my life. If I had psychosis, I would be seeing these kinds of problems everywhere. But no.
I eventually realized that it wasn’t me that was the problem, and she was gaslighting me.
This is an extreme example of Narcissistic Abuse from my mother – a Polish immigrant to the UK, with an extremely deprived and abusive upbringing.
I am lucky to be alive this day – a nasty combination of an antidepressant and gaslighting nearly resulted in my suicide 15 years ago.
Dear E.M. Carr – Regarding your bio: “Reading scientific papers she was horrified to discover the lack of actual science behind psychiatric diagnoses”. I would very much like to discuss further. I am researching my diagnosis and there is strong evidence of medical causes. I need solid resources, from psychiatric and medical doctors to patient advocates. How may I contact you? Thank you.
Hey
Your article resonates with me. I have been gaslighted by my husband for years, usually he says or does something and then denies it, he also twists around anything I say. We attended couples counselling and I have to say I found it extremely biased towards him. When I complained to the counsellor that my husband was gaslighting me, quoting several examples, his response was that he could see no evidence of gaslighting at all.
I would never do couples counselling again. In my opinion it is extremely dangerous and teaches the (usually) woman how to tolerate abuse, which is worrying when you consider how many people think this process is going to help them. Thank you for your article and I hope you find resolution with those who treated you so badly.
Hi,
Yes, I sympathize you for not being believed. In terms of counselling, I have met many people doing counselling training because they believe that they themselves are okay and sane and assume that what other people need is to learn how to be like them and everything will be okay. People who haven’t suffered themselves often can’t see the suffering of others and these people might actually be in positions that should have that level of empathy as a requirement of the job. The same goes for doctors, psychiatrists, and even, sadly, many psychologists, who cling to their positions of power to believe they are right, assume they know more than you about what is right or wrong, and in the process dismiss your experiences.
I got away from that relationship in the end by deciding to go with what I believed was the truth – that I was not mad – rather than what people told me must be true because psychiatrists (i.e. scientists) had confirmed it. I was very right to do so. My life is now happy and healthy and I want nothing more than to encourage other women and men suffering that type of abuse to gain the strength to get away from it, something which often isn’t easy because you often have to do it without the support of others.
One other thing I’d like to do, however, is ensure women’s voices aren’t dismissed in general in society. Gaslighting of women is so common – in the workplace, in families, by organisations who choose to ignore your emails… It is horrible to think how often people and organisations dismiss what women have to say and you realise that they just think you are mad, or someone to be laughed at. What is worse is it isn’t always men who do the gaslighting. Women so often support men who do it and believe what he says over and above the woman’s voice. This dismissal of women’s voices hurts our society a great deal.
This is happening to a friend of mine. His sister used to take him to the psychiatrist and give him his drugs. He is still on the drugs. He was treated badly by his family who are very controlling and when he disclosed abuse by a cousin they minimized the significance.
The psychiatrist used the term, “Lack of insight,” about my friend in front of me. All it means is that you dare to question the psychiatrists opinion.
Hi
Thanks for your comment; it has inspired me to share an actual example of gaslighting by a psychiatrist.
I once asked my psychiatrist about challenging my diagnosis. He told me that to challenge my diagnosis would be a sign of my lack of insight which is, he said, a symptom of my illness, and therefore me challenging my diagnosis would just go to prove I was ill.
This, I believe, is abusive. Everyone has the right to second opinions or to question what those in power tell them.
But having recently been following the excellent online ‘Critical Reasoning’ course by Professor Marianne Talbot of Oxford University, I think I am now able to go one further and actually show through formal logic how that psychiatrist’s argument doesn’t stand up. Formally, the argument would be set out like this (I think):
Premise 1: A lack of insight is a symptom of condition X;
Premise 2: To challenge having condition X is a lack of insight;
Conclusion: To challenge having condition X means the patient has condition X
This, I believe, falls down on the begging the question fallacy . To believe it we have to agree what insight means. I don’t believe anyone can scientifically determine that; it is completely subjective.
I’m new to analysing arguments in this way but I’m fairly sure the psychiatrist’s argument was deeply flawed. In light of this, I am currently trying to get hold of someone in policy at the Royal College of Psychiatrists to see if arguments like this are standard policy or merely the odd doctor here or there who hasn’t received training in critical reasoning.
Couple of things i’d like to say, and i’ll do my best to keep it brief.
have you ever read the book by Victor Santoro called Gaslighting, or how to drive your enemies crazy? I have been trying to get a copy for some time but it’s out of print. I’d like to see what is contained within this book as a victim of some vicious gaslighting myself.
I have often wondered (and asked the question elsewhere) about the gaslight in the movie. It seemed to me that the dimming of the gaslight was not an intentional act by Charles Boyer, but an unintended consequence of his search for the jewels. But this to me is the very nature of gaslighting, once the process is started it takes on a life of it’s own. The mind turns on itself and everything is now being questioned which takes up a lot of mind space (for want of a better term).
I read your article and think back to the time I spent in the hospital and I do believe that as a victim of gaslighting, I can spot others who are being subjected to attack. And what does psychiatry have to offer these victims? When all you have is a hammer…… all the worlds a nail.
I had a group of people get together and subject me to gaslighting in order to conceal their criminal conduct. I of course trusting and unaware of the crimes, and they concerned about how I would react if I did know, so rather than take the chance they set out to destroy me. And that they did, totally. But oh how they turned on each other when the threat of exposure reared it’s ugly head again.
I would hope that mental health professionals might be capable of identifying people being gaslighted, and do something to protect the victim. It really takes very little ‘tweaking’ to turn the knife around and have the perpetrator become the target if you know what your doing. Poetic justice?
Just on the issue of psychiatrists and gaslighting. One of the nastiest things that I ever had said to me by a psychiatrist was this. I was slandered as a wife beater by a Community Nurse to justify his actions. He wrote “wife fears being assaulted” in his documentation (more than once). When I obtained the documents I was furious with my wife for lying to these filthy slanderers and asked her “What are you doing saying such things about me when you know its a lie” and she replied with “I said no such thing”. Now, the point was that when I went back through the documents in detail it became apparent that this had been fabricated by the Community Nurse to meet his standard of their being a threat before incarcerating me.
Skip forwards two years and I am sitting talking to a psychiatrist after stepping in front of a truck. I show her the documents and she says “your wife was afraid of you” and I said “my wife wan’t afraid of me, I adored my wife and she knew under no circumstances would I harm her”. The psychiatrist responded with “your wife was too afraid to tell you she was afraid of you” to which I responded with ” That is an absolutely poisonous thing to say”. It was bad enough that the Community Nurse had injected poison into our relationship with hos slander, but this. Imagine being told that your partner is so afraid of you they won’t tell you? How does one psychologically resolve that? If she was afraid of me, then say so. Though I had never done anything to make her feel afraid of me, and she swore to my face emphatically that she had said no such thing. It was pure poison, and I hope that the psychiatrist concerned learned from our conversation as to the psychological harm that comes from such statements. Imagine, your children are so afraid of you they can’t even tell you? And what you see is kids who absolutely adore you? But with that poison injected? It’s a form of gaslighting.
Anyway, good article Ms E.M.Carr
When will psychiatry stop gaslighting it’s clients. “lack of insight” always being used if we don’t agree with the psychiatrist. Never that they have it wrong because they haven’t listened to us. I am working with someone at the moment who is feeling like mental health services continue to gaslight her and I agree with her when she describes it in this way.