Michael Gorra, The New York Review of Books, 6 Apr. 2022 So Dickens says, on this day when the sun seems to have died, and the haggard glow of gaslight can barely brighten the mist. David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 5 Sep. 2023 Davis captures the exterior scenes (shot on Inishmore, in the Aran Islands) in somber natural light, with candles and gaslight for the interiors, as befits an area where electricity would not have arrived until the 1970s. Philip Kennicott, Washington Post, 29 Apr. Noun But these images are also stagy and contrived, as if his birds are players on a stage, dramatically illuminated in the glow of gaslight. Its increasing use in many contexts contributed to making gaslighting Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2022. Unlike lying, which tends to be between individuals, and fraud, which tends to involve organizations, gaslighting applies in both personal and political contexts, and is found in formal and technical writing as well as in colloquial use. The idea of a deliberate conspiracy to mislead has made gaslighting useful in describing lies that are part of a larger plan. In this use, the word is at home with other terms relating to modern forms of deception and manipulation, such as fake news and deepfake. In the current century, the word has come to refer also to something simpler and broader: “the act or practice of grossly misleading someone, especially for a personal advantage” (sense 2). When gaslighting was first used in the mid-20th century, it referred to a kind of deception like that in the plots mentioned above (sense 1). His mysterious activities in the attic cause the house’s gas lights to dim, but he insists to his wife that the lights are not dimming and that she can’t trust her own perceptions. The origins of gaslighting are colorful: the term comes from the title of a 1938 play and the movies based on that play, the plots of which involve a man attempting to make his wife believe that she is going insane. They can lie and do harm without ever being held to account, because the victim becomes isolated from any support network that might step in.The Origin and Semantic Development of Gaslighting The effects of gaslighting enable the perpetrator to feel powerful, get what they want and avoid responsibility. In some cases, they’ve witnessed gaslighting growing up and internalised the behaviour. Often there are undiagnosed mental health issues for the gaslighter, such as controlling tendencies, trauma, narcissism, or a personality disorder. At the same time, anyone can still be a victim of gaslighting. As a result, those who gaslight tend not to target people with high levels of assertiveness, or a strong sense of self-belief. On the other hand, someone who gaslights can communicate in a way that has their friend, partner or family member experience self-doubt and confusion, and have them making constant apologies. In healthy relationships, both parties want the other person to trust their own judgement and feel secure about who they are. It is a targeted attempt to dominate another person and shirk accountability for wrongdoing by personally attacking the victim. Gaslighting goes beyond not being able to accept a different point of view to your own. It is a conscious, or sometimes learned, strategy used to control and weaken another person. True gaslighting is not mere pig-headedness, tactlessness or poor communication. They may even perform trickery, like moving household objects and then denying having done so to foster paranoia and self-doubt. Motivated by the desire to control another person, a gaslighter erodes their victim’s confidence by leading them to constantly doubt their own sanity, memory, intelligence and self-worth. Since then, the word has been adopted by psychologists, criminologists and lawyers to refer to a harmful form of manipulation. In the film, the female protagonist sees the lights flicker for no reason, but her husband tells her that it’s all in her head. The term gaslighting originates from the 1944 film ‘Gaslight’, about a woman whose husband slowly manipulates her into believing she is going insane.
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