By Ox Drover
I recently read The Gaslight Effect—How to spot and survive the hidden manipulations other people use to control your life, by Dr. Robin Stern. I highly recommend this book to Lovefraud readers.
Robin Stern, Ph.D., is a therapist specializing in emotional abuse and psychological manipulation. She teaches at Hunter College, Teachers College and Columbia University, and is a leadership coach for faculty.
This well-written book is quite reader friendly. Dr. Stern starts off by defining the term “gaslighting” as being “pressured by someone else to believe the unbelievable.” She goes on to show that gaslighting is “an insidious form of emotional abuse and manipulation that can be difficult to recognize and difficult to break free from.”
In the first chapter, Dr. Stern says:
I constantly encounter women who are smart, strong, successful. Yet, I keep hearing the same story: Somehow, many of these confident, high-achieving women were being caught in demoralizing, destructive and bewildering relationships. Although the woman’s friends and colleagues might have seen her as empowered and capable, she had come to view herself as incompetent—a person who could trust neither her own abilities nor her own perception of the world.
”¦ In every case, a seemingly powerful woman was involved in a relationship with a lover, spouse, friend, colleague, boss or family member who caused her to question her own sense of reality and left her feeling anxious, confused and deeply depressed ”¦ (and) whose approval she kept trying to win, even as his treatment of her went from bad to worse. Finally I was able to give this painful condition a name: The Gaslight Effect, after the old movie Gaslight.
In the 1944 classic film, Ingrid Bergman marries a charismatic and mysterious man played by Charles Boyer. It is the story of a young and vulnerable singer who marries an older man who, unbeknownst to her, tries to drive her insane in order to get her inheritance. He continually tells her that she is ill and fragile. He rearranges household items and accuses her of doing so, and manipulates the level of lights, which dim for no apparent reason. Eventually the heroine starts to believe she is going insane and begins to act “crazy.” She is desperate for her husband’s approval. She is only able to finally realize she is not insane when a policeman sees the lights dim and validates her reality.
Though Dr. Stern makes clear that not all gaslighters are deliberately trying to drive their partners insane, nevertheless, they invalidate the views and realities of their partners. In trying to please them, the partners let go of themselves and their view of reality.
Dr. Stern never uses the words “psychopath” or “sociopath,” but instead refers to emotional abusers as “gaslighters” and the abused as “gaslightees.” She does make it clear that there are patterns here that most of Lovefraud readers would equate with sociopaths and psychopaths.
Dr. Stern divides types of gaslighters into three categories of emotional abusers and three stages of gaslighting. She points out the internal signals, feelings that would tell a person being gaslighted that they are indeed experiencing some form of emotional abuse and invalidation of their reality by someone they want to please.
I am one of those people who, when reading a book, am apt to highlight passages in the book for later reference. With this book, I gave up highlighting because I tended to highlight entire chapters instead of a few phrases. In my opinion this book is a must have for every Lovefraud reader. It validates the very subtle feelings we get when we know something is wrong and can’t quite put our fingers on what is wrong with a relationship.
Not only does Dr. Stern point out how to recognize these feelings as warning signs, but she coaches readers in how to handle these in a way that is healthy and easily understood. She gives the tools to her readers to recognize even subtle signs of emotional abuse, and to confront this in such a way that if the victim is not dealing with a psychopath/sociopath, the relationship can be improved markedly. She also points out that there are some gaslighters that are so invested in being right that there is no hope for the relationship, and the only hope for the victim to be happy is to let go of that toxic relationship.
The Gaslight Effect is available on Amazon.com.
I have a concern about how some readers process a book like this. It was mentioned by a critical Amazon reviewer as well. In the movie Gaslight from which this term was taken, the wife started doubting her perceptions of reality partly because she observed the gas lighting to get brighter and dimmer–though her husband, who was causing these fluctuations, denied that it was doing so. However, he was not “turning” the gas up and down for the purpose of driving his wife crazy. That was not his ultimate motive.
Rather, the gas was going up and down as an unavoidable consequence of another activity he was carrying out in secret. It was because he couldn’t afford to reveal this to his wife that he denied anything was happening to the gas. So if she started doubting her own perceptions because of this, it’s not because his primary motive was to make her do so. That was just a side effect of what he was doing elsewhere.
To be sure, there were other considerations. For the wife to start thinking she was “going crazy” did suit the husband’s purposes in another way. It led her to discount any suspicions she might otherwise have of what he was really after. Yet even here there’s an important distinction. His ultimate goal was not “to drive his wife crazy.” If he did drive her crazy, that was only a means to an end. His real motive was to protect himself so that he could complete the secret activity he was engaged in. If his wife was “driven crazy” in the process, that was merely “collateral damage” to him.
This is an important point, because some people seem to misunderstand some of the motives of abusers (not necessarily psychopaths), and I suspect there might be a reason for that.
Anita provided what seems to me a good example of this:
Now of course I don’t know this man or anything about him. But why would anyone assume he was doing this with the intent of “destroying” his partner?
It’s not impossible, of course. Abusers who are angry enough at their partner (for all kinds of irrational reasons) can certainly do things with the intention of “punishing” their partner. That can “destroy” anyone in the long run. However, a great many things that abusers do, as unfair or even harmful as they may be, are not done with the intent of hurting a partner, but for some other reason. With abusers in general, most of what they do is not about you; it’s about THEM.
For one thing a great many abusers have distorted perceptions of reality. Patricia Evans for one points out in her own books that abusers, as she puts it, “live in a different reality.” (I don’t like the wording myself because I don’t like to confuse true (objective) reality with subjective perceptions of it, but her observation is valid enough.) Often what abusers tell you, as crazy as it may be, is only the way they see things themselves in their own twisted way.
Abusers can have a remarkable facility for telling themselves (as well as you) that something “didn’t happen the way you remember it.” Needless to say, this is particularly true if it’s something they “did wrong” themselves! Many abusers can’t bear to “see themselves” in the wrong, so they get very skillful over the years at rearranging their own memories. Then they can hardly believe the true reality you’re reminding them about.
The effect is very likely to leave you confused and disoriented. But that doesn’t mean their purpose is “to leave you confused and disoriented.” That’s the fallacy of confusing consequences with intent. If you’re left confused and disoriented, that’s only a side effect of what they’re really aiming to achieve.
In many situations an abuser may genuinely imagine you’re “confused” because you don’t seem to see reality the way they do! Yet even when an abuser is knowingly lying (like that husband in Gaslight), ten to one it’s not with the purpose of driving you crazy. Rather, it’s with the purpose of protecting themselves–from an accusation of wrongdoing, or something of the kind. In situations like this, it’s not about you or how you feel, not in the abuser’s mind; it’s all about THEM and what THEY feel or want. If you end up “feeling crazy” because they twist reality, that’s just collateral damage to an abuser, who probably won’t notice anyway. Many of them don’t notice half of what they do. They’re blind to it.
So it may not be accurate to talk about an ex who manipulated “to keep me” helpless and confused, as if that were his goal. That’s only a result of what he did.
I felt there were good grounds to pick on this example, because of the story about the dog that illustrated it. The dog was sick and the vet bill was likely to run into the thousands. On hearing this, Ex said he had no money to cover it. Finally, after further pressure, he gave in and coughed up some money, but said he’d had to borrow it from his sister. Only later did it transpire that he had access to some tens of thousands of dollars at the time.
One consequence of this was that you felt “extremely anxious and insecure” about finances in general. But I don’t see any reason to conclude that all this “theater” of his was actually designed to make you “feel anxious and insecure.” Even if he was not a psychopath or any other kind of abuser, to me his real motive was glaringly obvious. FEELINGS were not the point. MONEY was the point!–just as it was in Gaslight.
Of course I’m not trying to say “money” is always behind controlling behavior. Far from it! A great many more things are done for intangible motives, to protect an abuser’s emotional security. But in this incident it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Ex’s motive was simply to protect HIS MONEY. Your own feelings or goals didn’t figure in this–or only insofar as he did give you some money.
Exactly what factors made him behave that way, where other people would not have done, is another question. For all I know, he might have been very insecure about money himself. He must have been very reluctant to go spending thousands of dollars on a sick dog, when in his mind there might be other unexpected demands on the finances at any time. I’m sure he must have feared that if you knew what a nest egg he’d built up, you’d be putting more demands on him to spend it. Controlling people, rightly or wrongly, fear all kinds of things. Psychopaths aside, fear is what makes most of them so controlling. At any rate, telling you he didn’t have any money and had to borrow from his sister got the RESULT he was really after. It made you reluctant to ask him for more money, so he wouldn’t have to put up with the pressure and could keep more of his nest egg intact.
If he was indeed a psychopath, it’s particularly true that your feelings wouldn’t matter to him. If you felt “anxious and insecure,” that was immaterial to him as long as HE didn’t have to contend with demands on his bank account. At the very least, your feelings of insecurity were far less important to him than his own. This was all about HIM, not about you.
As I mentioned earlier, I suspect there might be a reason why some people seem to misunderstand certain motives of abusers. I think people fail to grasp how “alien” is the thinking of many abusers–meaning how different it is from their own! They come up with all kinds of reasons why abusers do what they do–“it must be work stress,” “it must be insecurity,” “it must be anger over such-and-such,” “it must be something I’ve done myself”, and so forth–and some of them are right some of the time, and some of them are wrong a lot of the time. Yet I suspect what many people find hard to grasp is that often, abusers just aren’t aware of how their partners feel–or if they are, they don’t care one way or the other. Grasping this fact may be particularly hard for a partner who is personally very empathetic and caring and always tries to be cognizant of what others are feeling. “How could anyone not be like that?” Besides, if any of us as human beings takes on a mate who appears to “love” us, we’re operating under the assumption that they do “care” about us in the way that any normal human would care. Yet that may not be true of an abuser.
Then if the abuser ends up “driving the partner crazy” (or doing some other kind of harm), the partner may fall for a wrong assumption: that the abuser “must have known,” “must have seen” this was happening, or “must have felt something about it”–and “therefore” driving the partner crazy must have been the abuser’s conscious intent. It may even be easier for some partners to believe this, rather than accept that the abuser just didn’t care enough about them one way or the other. Yet because an abuser can be so preoccupied with some personal obsession, or so totally self-absorbed, or (in the case of the psychopath) so completely lacking any capacity for empathy, the fact that the partner is being “driven crazy” may not even appear on an abuser’s radar screen!
Redwald:
Bottom line…..it’s not always personal, but as a victim of these types…….the devastation sure is.
We need something to make sense of it all……and blame offers some clarity.
Welcome to Lf, I enjoyed your insight.
Hello Oxy,
Thank you for the review, it sounds like an excellent book. I just joined Lovefraud today; I had an opportunity to read some of the Comments, Categories and Monthly Archives. I only wish I knew about this site early. I have dealt with a Sociopath for approximately 9 years, through prayer; God gave me the strength and courage to finally leave. I am glad I found this sight, because I still have bad days, I’m glad I can get support on this site, from people that understand how I feel.
Peace and Blessings……
Oops….I mean Ox….sorry….: – )
ThankGodImFinallyFree: (TGIF) 🙂
Welcome to Lf. Keep reading and educating yourself……and taking one step at a time!
Again Welcome!
XXOO
EB
Hello EB,
Thank you for the warm welcome! I will continue to educate myself and I never give up! NEVER…..
Peace and Blessings……
Dear TGIFF! WELCOME!!!! Yes, I think God helped Donna put this site together for us all! It has been a life saver! Glad you are here, educating ourselves first about them, and then about OURSELVES is the key I think. I’m finally at a point it is more about ME now than about them, and that is a liberating point. I got there and then back-slid several times, but it is more about me now, and so am making progress.
Healing is a process, a journey, and that is what we must enjoy cause it is “life”—and the lessons we learn from the things we overcome help us and help us to help others.
Donna is my HERO!!!! She has helped us all to help ourselves. In the end it is like giving birth to a child, no one can do it for you they can just hold your hand and encourage you to push!
Glad you are here.
REDWALD, your long and thoughtful post is very thought provoking and I agree with you in some things. The INTENT isn’t always there, they just take advantage of what naturally happens, but in many cases of emotional abuse the intent IS THERE.
The saying of things that are demeaning and devaluing and then when the victim becomes upset, feeling the demeaning and devaluation the abuser comes back with “Oh, you are too sensitive…etc.” (a lie and projection) The victim has the choice at that point to realize the truth (the person meant to demean them which their gut tells them is true) or to believe what the abuser is saying (YOU are taking it wrong.) So their GUT tells them the truth and the abuser discounts it and they feel both confused and demeaned and start to doubt themselves.
The use of projection by the abuser turns the “wrong” back on to the one who is being wronged.
I really do suggest you get this book and read it for yourself. It is very insightful and recopying great parts of it out would be okay I guess, but I think it is one that has to be taken as a WHOLE. The bottom line is she is talking about psychopaths as the worst of the abusers, and “tacky and hateful” people who are insensitive to others in a lesser way and those in between. (My words).
Glad you are here!
“gaslighting” he totally messed with my mind. He stole money out of the canisters after he talked me into to hiding the cash in the canisters. He screamed at me when I found the money missing. He screamed and screamed that my kids stole it. He sure used screaming to wiggle his way out…
He used every method to mess with my mind. He would pull coats off the hooks while I was downstairs doing laundry. I would have to pick-up the coats off the steps while I was lugging full laundry baskets up the steps. I finally figured out he was doing it after the third load. Cause I peeked around the corner to see him pull the coats off the hooks. He got pissed at being caught and screamed “I’m always accusing him”.
Why didn’t I think it was him before? Cause he kept me too busy.
He refused to help. He laid on the couch. When I asked for help he screamed.
He pointed the finger at me screaming that my kids need discipline, and he screamed that I should jump down their throat. Then he laid back down on the couch while he continued screaming about the flaws of my kids, and the flaws of my parenting.
When he finally got off his duff…. it was to tear down the house.
He tore off windows. With no plan to replace them. He tore up my back lawn with no plan to replace the grass, he ripped off cabinet doors with no plans to replace them. He cut down the awnings that I wanted (never addressed the awnings I didn’t want) . He never took care of the “touch points” that he bragged he knows how to do. The city came after me for that.
How was I so stupid? He talked me into each project by hounding me into it. He would work on me all day and all night. I would give in just to get him off my back.
and then when he didn’t finish the job he lead me to believe it was my fault. And, he also had the nerve to tell me to finish the job by telling me I’m “able bodied”. While he jumped back on the couch.
He was crazy. He did more than this. He also called my dad to say I’m the crazy one and that he is trying to save me. My sister told me this. She set dad straight. She told dad that he is the problem.
This told me that sociopaths really know how to pick their victims. They know to pick people from family’s where they don’t get support, don’t have a father to look after them.
Well, this man with all of his opinions on my child rearing and parenting committed suicide on March 2004. He jumped off a building after he lost at gambling. He gambled the $6000.00 he stole out of his mothers bank account. The police found him with change in his pocket.
I feel pathetic to feel that I made “someone” out of a homeless person. Though I didn’t know I was doing that. He had me fooled into thinking he was a normal employed person.
He fooled a lot of people including my family.
Hello Ox D,
Thank you for the encouraging words, I can relate to the “back-sliding” again and again, I always had hope. But, the following words sum up how I felt after going back and forth, “The depths of despair to which I sank were beyond description. I spent hours each day weeping”.Alan Redpath”
I thank God for giving Donna the insight to create LF; I can’t express how happy I am to have a “blog family” to reach out to for encouragement support during my healing process.
Glad to be here.
Again, thank you!
Peace and Blessings.
TGIFF
@southernman, great My Space page, thank you very much for putting all that together, I have visited your page in the past… this time I am definitely placing a bookmark on this link, the part about having low self esteem and clinging to the manipulator/abuser really sums up what I was doing. You are such a decent, caring man to compile all this information. I hope you are doing well and God Bless you.