The inner life
Gaslighting
Direct answer
Gaslighting is the practice of leading a person to doubt their own memory, perception or judgement through persistent denial, contradiction and false information.
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At a glance
- Found in
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Related
- Coercive Control, Dark Triad, Machiavellianism, Cognitive Dissonance
Gaslighting is the practice of leading a person to doubt their own memory, perception or judgement through persistent denial, contradiction and false information.
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What is gaslighting?
The gaslighter insists that what the other person saw, heard or remembers did not happen, or happened differently, and keeps insisting. Things are moved and the moving denied. Promises are disowned. Reasonable upset is called oversensitivity or imagination. Over time the target stops trusting their own account and leans on the gaslighter's, which is the point.
Gaslighting depends on a close relationship and an imbalance of power, and it is most damaging when the target has been cut off from others who could confirm their memory. A single lie or a sincere difference of recollection is not gaslighting. The word names a sustained pattern.
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What sets Gaslighting apart
Its target is unusual. Most deceit aims to plant one false belief; gaslighting aims at the capacity to form beliefs, so that the person defers to the deceiver about what is real. The play shows the mechanism precisely: a small physical change, flatly denied, by someone whose word the victim has reason to trust. Researchers stress the setting as much as the tactic. It works where one party holds more power and the other has been cut off from people who could confirm what they saw.
- Play: Gas Light, by Patrick Hamilton, London, 1938
- Films: Gaslight, 1940 (British) and 1944 (American, with Ingrid Bergman)
- The device: the husband dims the gas lamps, then denies any change
- Word of the year: Merriam-Webster, 2022
- Sociological study: Paige Sweet, The Sociology of Gaslighting, 2019
Often mistaken for something else: Lying hides a fact; gaslighting attacks the other person's trust in their own senses and memory, and needs repetition and a close tie to work.
The story behind Gaslighting
The term comes from Gas Light, a play by Patrick Hamilton first staged in London in 1938, and from the 1944 film Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman. A husband searching the attic for hidden jewels makes the lamps of the house dim, and tells his wife she is imagining it, so as to have her put away. The verb was in American use by the 1960s, entered psychology and general speech later, and was Merriam-Webster's word of the year for 2022.
Why Gaslighting matters
Gaslighting is the manipulation that attacks the very faculty a person needs in order to notice manipulation: trust in their own mind.
How to read Gaslighting
Readers apply the word to a repeated pattern, and check it by keeping dated notes and by asking someone outside what they saw.
Gaslighting in practice: an example
'That never happened, you always get confused', said week after week about things a person clearly recalls, is the pattern in miniature.
Where readings of Gaslighting go wrong
Gaslighting is a description, not a medical term, and an honest clash of memories is not gaslighting; someone made afraid by it needs outside support.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Consciousness & Spiritual Psychology
- Aliases
- gaslight, gaslighting meaning, what is gaslighting, gaslighting examples
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
See Gaslighting in your personal almanac
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Common questions
What is gaslighting?
It is manipulating someone into doubting their own memory or sanity by repeatedly denying facts, contradicting them and supplying false versions of events.
Where does the word gaslighting come from?
From Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play Gas Light and its 1944 film, in which a husband secretly dims the gas lamps and tells his wife that the change is in her head.
How can I tell if I am being gaslit?
Common signs are doubting clear memories, apologising constantly and feeling unable to trust one's own judgement around one person. Writing events down as they happen and checking with a trusted outsider helps.
