Gaslighting

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a perpetrator causes a target to question their own perception, memory, and judgment. The term derives from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light, in which a husband manipulates his wife into believing she is losing her mind by systematically denying her perceptions of reality. In narcissistic abuse relationships, gaslighting typically follows the love bombing phase and is deployed during the devaluation phase to undermine the target’s confidence in their own account of what is happening. Common gaslighting tactics include denying that events occurred, reframing the target’s accurate perceptions as evidence of emotional instability, and claiming that expressions of hurt or confusion are attacks on the perpetrator. Gaslighting is one of the primary mechanisms by which coercive control erodes epistemic trust — the target’s capacity to trust their own perception as a reliable source of information.