The Gaslighter and the Gaslit

All significant concepts of the modern theory of politics are secularized psychotherapeutic concepts

Sorry for the low-effort header. This is train photoshop and the typos are intentional.

In Why Group Narcissism? I suggested that, in contrast with older analogies between theology and politics, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez conceived of politics in terms of analogies to psychotherapy. Today, Scientific American published an article that supports my contention that public rhetoric continues to move toward this same analogical framework. While the article reflects an older tactic largely borne of politicized psychoanalytical research from the Frankfurt School and other quasi-Marxist academic schools (pathologization of political trends the author disagrees with) it also reflects a turn toward a more metaphorical psychotherapeutic political rhetoric.

The article “How Gaslighting Manipulates Reality” by Paige L. Sweet, associate professor of sociology at Michigan, is subtitled “Gaslighting isn’t just between people in a relationship—it involves social power, too.”

To Sweet’s credit, she concedes “gaslighting” is basically an internet meme, a relatively vacuous buzzword that’s gained significant purchase in non-academic discourse. She nonetheless is engaged in researching the concept and published this article to summarize the results of some of her research.

Roughly, gaslighting refers to someone else making you feel crazy through dishonest psychological manipulation. To this uncontroversial definition, Sweet adds that, like all forms of psychological abuse, gaslighting depends on “the mobilization (or creation) of a power imbalance against the victim.” This sounds a lot like the asinine definition of racism as privilege plus power that intelligent people were gaslit into believing in the aughts. For Sweet, controlling “narratives is key to how power imbalances are established and reproduced.” Thus if someone controls the narrative and lies, and listeners are made to feel confused or crazy by the lie, then that someone is a gaslighter and the listeners are the gaslit.

For Sweet, gaslighting isn’t just something that occurs between intimates, “it also unfolds as part of an unequal social context.” “Gaslighting feeds off social vulnerabilities and stereotypes,” Sweet continues, and “entrenches existing power imbalances while fostering new ones.” Here is where gaslighting moves from a form of psychological abuse identified by a therapist to a description of political phenomena:

“The term is also increasingly used to describe structural racism, sexism, homophobia and ableism. Scholars and activists have used the term “racelighting,” for instance, to name racial microaggressions that undermine the experiences of people of color and the ideologies that cover up these behaviors; a 2021 policy report described race-based gaslighting as “institutionalized in the social fabric.”

Sweet values the term because “we now have a language to talk about psychological abuse and its links to oppressive structures such as racism and ableism.” As one example of Political Gaslighting, she points to another Scientific American article that is such an exquisite example of the distorted reasoning behind group narcissism that it deserves its own separate analysis.

The article, written by a group of 12 “physicians”, advances an enormously paranoid and conspiratorial interpretation of the media response to the first description of the cause of George Floyd’s death in a charging document, characterizing the media and ordinary non-Black American responses to the charging document as “gaslighting”. According to the authors, ordinary Americans who had no other information about the cause of his death beyond the charging document gaslit and abused Black America by denying their experience of what they, as experts in Minnesota deadly force statutes, saw on the video.

The phrase “undermine the experiences” is key here. Initially the case studies Sweet offers are relatively persuasive examples from dysfunctional intimate relationships featuring criminally abusive individuals. For example, in one case, a woman who had separated from her husband and moved into a new apartment returned home one day to find her husband had broken in. He was sitting on the couch and nonchalantly asked her what they were having for dinner that night. In this instance, the husband’s pathological behavior involves “intentionally distorting” his wife’s sense of reality.

But some of the other cases are far less persuasive. For instance, in one case a crazy lawyer fired a woman of color after she had tried to get the lawyer to stop telling sexually off-color jokes. Sweet notes that the woman also detected a racial element to their hostile interactions but doesn’t provide any details. In response, the lawyer wrote a 500-page screed (which I would really like to read) about how the woman had laughed at his jokes. For Sweet, this was deemed gaslighting because the lawyer’s screed denied the woman’s “experiences of harm in the workplace, distorting her responses to his jokes.” Sweet stresses again that denying someone’s reality – disagreeing with their interpretation of reality – and “distorting interpretations of past events are key to all forms of gaslighting.”

In another case a woman was being gaslit by her lesbian partner who had cheated. For the victim, Alex, “it was hard to identify this experience as “gaslighting” because there was no clear gender-based power differential between her and her same-sex partner.” This confusion makes sense, as power differentials are impossible between women qua women - for example, a power differential between a big strong woman and a tiny woman is impossible.

Despite this nonconformity, Sweet concludes there was gaslighting going on because “Alex’s partner gained power in the relationship by using Alex’s own values against her, insisting Alex was being “jealous”, a trait they both believed was toxic.” By invoking Alex’s shared values, the cheating partner intimated that Alex should be disappointed in herself (as opposed to being disappointed in her partner for cheating), and thereby denied Alex’s experience of the situation.

Making someone feel ashamed when they shouldn’t like this is a frequent feature of gaslighting, according to Sweet. In a related example of shame gaslighting, Sweet describes how a victim of domestic abuse was gaslit into feeling responsible for her abuse, because her abuser was good at provoking or “trolling” her into states of irrational rage and then acting bewildered by her behavior.

One point I’d make here is that there’s a difference between appealing to shared values to guilt someone and manipulating someone into behaving in a shameful way. In either case, however, we can see how the vague description of “denying” a person’s “experience” can transform from an accurate diagnosis of abusive behavior into a pathologization of a person reasonably disagreeing with someone.

In the context of narcissism, where denying the narcissist’s subjective self-image is experienced as the highest form of abuse, we can see how the rhetoric of gaslighting can become another rhetorical tool in the narcissist’s defensive kit. Further, if we follow current trends and extend this by analogy to group self-perceptions, we can see how the rhetoric of gaslighting can be used to pathologize and dismiss legitimate and reasonable disagreement.

The Scientific American article on the George Floyd charging document is an excellent example with its unsubstantiated claims about “widespread anti-Black violence” and its bizarre statements about “perpetuating stereotypes” about “disease, risky behavior and intoxication in Black bodies.” Instead of simply saying that the charging document claims were eventually refuted by a medical examiner’s report, meaning that the conservative media claims based on the charging document were also refuted, the authors spin up a paranoid theory of “structural gaslighting” to ascribe conspiratorial intent to anyone who drew conclusions from the charging document. This is no different from our narcissist who spins up conspiracy theories when he receives a phone call from his boss:

“For example, when he misses a call from his boss, the resulting feeling of uncertainty causes anxiety (as it would for anyone); but rather than reconcile himself with waiting to learn the purpose of the call, his fantasy world projects paranoid internal conspiracies, formulating a persecution narrative in his head and distorting his perception of his boss. In response, our narcissist develops an urgent need to defend against the boss through one of the various compensatory mechanisms employed by narcissists.”