Gaslighting is a form of manipulation intended to distract. Gaslighters will say, do and post the most outrageous things to take your focus off of something else. The term originates with a play called “Gas Light.” In the play, a woman’s husband tries to convince her that she is mentally unstable. He makes small changes in her environment, such as dimming the gaslights in their house. He then convinces his wife she is simply imagining these changes. His ultimate goal is to have her committed to an asylum so he can steal her inheritance.
Kate Abramson, philosophy professor at the University of Indiana, calls gaslighting the “deepest kind of moral wrong” and suggests that it aims ‘to induce in someone the sense that her reactions, perceptions, memories and/or beliefs are not just mistaken, but utterly without grounds.’ For the most part, this manipulation by distraction technique is very effective at changing people’s sense of reality and is currently practised by many politicians.
According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, techniques a person may use to gaslight someone include:
- Countering: This describes a person questioning someone’s memories. They may say things such as, “you never remember things accurately,” or “are you sure? You have a bad memory.”
- Withholding: When someone withholds, they refuse to engage in a conversation. A person using this technique may pretend not to understand someone so that they do not have to respond to them.
- Trivializing: This occurs when a person belittles or disregards the other person’s feelings. They may accuse them of being too sensitive or of overreacting when they have valid concerns and feelings.
- Denial: Denial involves a person pretending to forget events or how they occurred. They may deny having said or done something or accuse someone of making things up.
- Diverting: With this technique, a person changes the focus of a discussion and questions the other person’s credibility instead. For example, they might say, “that is just another crazy idea you got from your friends.”
- Stereotyping: A person using gaslighting techniques may intentionally use negative stereotypes of a person’s gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, or age to manipulate them.
Gaslighting is not a new phenomenon. Instead, as Jesus reveals in today’s Gospel reading (Luke 11.42-46), it has been practised for many years in the context of religion.
The first form of gaslighting that Jesus highlights is that of using minor but visible aspects of religious practice to distract others from an unwillingness or inability to practice the kind of love and justice to which religious practices are intended to lead. The example he gives is of Pharisees who give a tenth of their herbs while not practising love and justice towards others. By seeming to obey the Jewish law to the nth degree through tithing money and produce, the Pharisees were able to distract attention away from lack of charity and unjust practices towards others.
The second form of gaslighting is in regard to image by using the prestige associated with places of authority or power to distract attention away from an inability to come alive spiritually. Such people have no reality to their spiritual life and therefore will not be remembered but use the trappings of religious practices to give the impression of sanctity or piety. Abramson’s argues, that the gaslighter poses as a source of normative authority. The gaslighter assumes the pretence of sincere testimony, drawing on their standing to issue demands that others see things their way.
The third form of gaslighting highlighted by Jesus involves the constant addition of rules and regulations that apply to others as a distraction from the reality that such rules are not applied to oneself. Such people seek to make life harder for others while relieving themselves of such constraints.
By contrast, Jesus seeks to tell it like it is. He tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem to die, he tells those wishing to follow him that they will have to bear crosses too, he tells Peter that he will deny him and Judas that he will betray him. His disciples often don’t understand or don’t want to understand, yet there is a straightforwardness and transparency about much of what Jesus said and did, with no attempt to curry favour or distract from the challenges of faith.
With that same directness and honesty Jesus calls out the gaslighting practised by the Pharisees and lawyers for what it is. Psychotherapist Stephanie Sarkis says that this is the other response we should make to gaslighters: ‘When you see gaslighting among your friends, family or colleagues, call it out for what it is. Provide evidence that what a gaslighter is saying and doing is not true. Educate others about gaslighting so that they, too, can start to identify it and call it out. But when you catch a gaslighter, simply present the facts to them, calmly and with purpose. Don’t allow yourself to get baited. Then walk away, shut off your laptop, leave it be.’ Her advice seems to mirror what we see Jesus do and say here as he pronounces woes on the gaslighters of his own day and time.
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Tracy Chapman - God Was Watching.
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