Gaslighting in the Medical Literature

Have you felt that your sense of reality has been challenged lately? That the word “truth” has no meaning any more? Does the existence of alternative facts make you question your own sanity? In modern usage, the term gaslighting refers to “a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented to the victim with the intent of making him/her doubt his/her own memory and perception”.

Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or members of a group, hoping to make targets question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target's belief.

In December 2016, the amazing Lauren Duca¹ wrote a widely shared piece for Teen Vogue, Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America. In it, she argued that Trump won the election by normalizing deception. Duca noted that the term gaslighting originated from the 1938 play Gas Light by Patrick Hamilton, and explained it in this way:

"Gas lighting" is a buzzy name for a terrifying strategy currently being used to weaken and blind the American electorate. We are collectively being treated like Bella Manningham in the 1938 Victorian thriller from which the term "gas light" takes its name. In the play, Jack terrorizes his wife Bella into questioning her reality by blaming her for mischievously misplacing household items which he systematically hides. Doubting whether her perspective can be trusted, Bella clings to a single shred of evidence: the dimming of the gas lights that accompanies the late night execution of Jack’s trickery. The wavering flame is the one thing that holds her conviction in place as she wriggles free of her captor’s control.

Gaslighting in the Medical Literature

Barton and Whitehead (1969) were the first to report cases where a patient's mental state was manipulated for material (or situational) gain, calling it the “Gas-Light Phenomenon”. If these incidents sound like something straight out of domestic noir or a TV crime drama, you'd be right.


Case 1 – 48 year old mechanic, married for 10 years, with three children

Mr. A. was admitted one evening to a psychiatric hospital as an emergency. His general practitioner, when asking for his admission, had said he was mentally ill and had attacked his wife. ...

On admission the patient said he had felt tense and depressed for about six months and related this to his wife’s changed attitude towards him. He said she had become "cold", and he thought she might have been seeing another man. He denied he had been violent and thought he had been sent into hospital because of his "nerves".

His wife had concocted an elaborate tale of abuse, saying he had become “irritable, bad-tempered, and liable to unprovoked violent outbursts in which he sometimes hit her and once struck her with a hatchet.” She also claimed his memory was deteriorating, and she categorically denied having an affair. Mr. A was hospitalized for 12 days with no obvious physical or psychiatric disorder and left feeling more relaxed.

However, he returned to hospital two weeks later: “He said his wife had started taunting him, saying he was mad and should be in a mental hospital. His wife said that his mental condition had considerably worsened and that he had attacked her twice.”

Fortunately for Mr. A, his boss overheard a conversation between two men in the local tavern. One of the men was Mrs. A's lover, discussing how the two of them had plotted to get rid of Mr. A using the false claims of mental illness and abuse. The hospital staff confronted Mrs. A with her lies:

She finally agreed that she had plotted with her boy-friend to get rid of her husband, but claimed she had been led on by him and now very much regretted her behaviour. Following some family counselling Mr. and Mrs. A. became reconciled and five years later were still living happily together.

Case 2 – 45 year old pub owner married for 14 years

Mr. B was admitted based on his wife's story about her husband’s “heavy drinking, erratic behaviour, and aggressive outbursts.”

On admission to the unit Mr. B. gave a history of domestic difficulties and described mild symptoms of anxiety and depression. ...  He agreed that he was irritable but said that he had never been aggressive and did not acknowledge any of the common symptoms of alcoholism. ... recently ... his wife had lost interest in him and had started associating with younger men. She often stayed out all night, and when he asked her about this behaviour she told him not to be silly and accused him of being a drunk who should be put away.

A member of the staff eventually found out about Mrs. B's fabrication and her intent to get rid of her husband, keep the pub, and “then really start living.” Unlike the outcome of Case 1, Mr. B left his wife and was quite happy without her five years later.


Case 3 – 72 year old widow

This case is unique, because it goes beyond mere mental manipulation. Mrs. C. was referred to a psychiatric hospital because of a "confusional state" and "fecal incontinence" that made her unfit for the old persons' home where she resided. She had moderate Parkinson's disease and slight dementia, but she was fairly well oriented and pleasant in demeanor. She stayed in the hospital for six weeks and showed no signs of fecal incontinence while there. And indeed it turned out that her incontinence had been cruelly induced by large doses of laxatives:

The lady running the home had been unable to develop a good relationship with Mrs. C. and considered "she was a naughty old thing making life difficult for me, my staff, and other folk on purpose".

For some weeks before admission to hospital Mrs. C. had been receiving ’Dulcolax’ tablets one three times a day. This had produced the expected effect with occasional "accidents" due to Mrs. C.’s mobility difficulties. The evidence suggested that Mrs. C. was not wanted in the home and induced incontinence was used as a method of getting her removed to hospital.

Case 4 – Another example is an incident reported by Lund and Gardiner (1977), where the staff of the mental hospital conspired to keep a patient there so that one of them could live in her flat. The elderly woman had suffered from paranoid episodes in the past that were successfully treated with medication. But this time “they” were really out to get her:

Miss A., an 80-year-old retired professional lady, was first admitted to a mental hospital in connection with this incident under Section 31 of the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 1960, from her pleasant flat in a residential establishment. The admission notes stated that she had complained that there were people on the premises who had no business there, that they had spoken outside her door saying that they were going to throw her into the river and that she further believed that these people were 'after my flat'...

Miss A was shuttled in and out of hospital several times until the evil plot was finally foiled:

She was admitted for the third time some four months later with a depressingly similar story. Her general practitioner had been called to the home where the patient had allegedly ' barricaded her room'; she had simply put a chair against the door. She was again admitted under an Emergency Order and once more settled down very rapidly, showing no sign of disturbed behaviour. She was generally pleasant and witty, showing some evidence of valuing her independence and mildly resenting the help of the nursing staff, which she regarded as unnecessary interference.

At this point, suspicion about the motives of the staff at the institution were aroused. Discreet inquiries revealed that the rooms which Miss A occupied had been earmarked for a proposed additional member of staff...

[And the rental market has only gotten worse in the last 40 years!! So it's not surprising to see many stories emerging from trendy urban areas (and South Carolina). For starters, you can read these anecdotes of landlord gaslighting and harassment from tenants in New York, San Francisco, Santa Monica, and elsewhere.]


Case 5 – Let's conclude with one final report from the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Kutcher (1982) described the sad case of Mrs. N, a 59 year old financially successful woman who was referred to a psychiatrist at her husband's insistence. Marital problems were clearly the source of her distress.

About two years into the marriage she established Mr. N in a business as he had entered the relationship without a secure financial basis. She then noted he would stay away from home, be unavailable when she tried to contact him, tell her he was visiting with friends even though they denied any visits, and so forth. When she confronted him with these issues he denied any extramarital activity.  ...

Mr. N. wasn't terribly creative; his ruse was ripped from the pages of Gaslight. An outside party described him as "a 60 year old Cassanova who thinks he's 25."

Numerous friends often intimated that he was involved with another woman and Mrs. N eventually saw this for herself. When confronted, he denied it, then said it was all over and refused to discuss the matter further. He then complained about her "saggy breasts" and when she had surgery for reduction he ridiculed her. He hid her jewelry and accused her of losing it, often changed times they were to meet without notifying her and berated her for being late; and told their acquaintances that she was "going a little strange."

Unfortunately, Mrs. N's case was not a success story: “Currently she is still in therapy and as yet is unable to resolve the issue.”


Let's hope the U.S. can collectively (and individually) regain its grip on the truth so it will not suffer a similar fate.


Footnote

¹ I think she's amazing for her persistence as a guiding voice on social media despite the grotesque harassment she's received.

OK, gaslighting has jumped the shark https://t.co/wkjxzjGkyE

— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) May 10, 2017

Further Reading

On the Origins of “Gaslighting” (by Rosemary Erickson Johnsen)

A Few Notes on Gaslighting (by Tressie McMillan Cottom)


References

Barton R, & Whitehead JA (1969). The gas-light phenomenon. Lancet (London, England), 1 (7608), 1258-60. PMID: 4182427

Kutcher SP (1982). The gaslight syndrome. Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie, 27 (3), 224-7 PMID: 7093877

Lund CA, & Gardiner AQ (1977). The gaslight phenomenon--an institutional variant. The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science, 131, 533-4. PMID: 588872

Smith CG, & Sinanan K (1972). The "gaslight phenomenon" reappears. A modification of the Ganser syndrome. The British journal of psychiatry : the journal of mental science, 120 (559), 685-6 PMID: 5043219 — [although Milo Tyndel (1973) pointed out those cases were nothing like Ganser syndrome].

In today's episode of "Gaslight"... https://t.co/M70Zv5rPXe

— Jon Cryer (@MrJonCryer) May 22, 2017

You can watch the entire film for free at archive.org.