OK I just heard one too many talk show hosts get it wrong about the meanjing of the term gaslighting. No it is not just some specially egregious degree of lying.When
When the term started to be used frequently a few years ago I didn't know what it meant so I looked it up and found out that it comes from an old movie titled Gaslight. I found the movie at Amazon and watched it. Ingrid BBergman and Charles Boyer are the stars. He marries her knowing that there is a fabulous treasure of gemstones hidden somewhere in her family home which he wants access to. They move into the house and he explores the part of it where he suspects the jewels are hidden. He goes out every night letting her think he is going somewhere else but doubles back ahnd enters the room he wants to explore for the treasure. The whole point is that he doesn't want her to know he is looking for it.
this is back in the days before electricity and the house is lit by gas that runs through pipes from fixture to fixture in thevarious rooms. When he turns on the light in the room he is exploring it causes the lights in the rest of the house to dim slightly and she notices that and wonders what could be causing it since she believes he has left the house and there is only herself and the housekeeper there. The housekeeper is in on the plot by her husband and denies that the lights are going dim, as doeas her husband ewhen she tells him about it. It is this deniial of an inconvenient truth that is the meaning of gaslighting. He alsmost succeeds in driving her completely crazy with this particular denial of her
perceptions but many others he has been concocking for the same purpose.
Of course it's about lies but the point of it is to make someone feel he or she is out of his mind by causing him to doubt his own perceptions/.
There you go.
