More from Dr. Robin Stern on gaslighting

I’ve recommended Dr. Robin Stern’s The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life (2018 ed.) as the best general source of information and guidance on the phenomenon of gaslighting, which occurs often in highly manipulative workplace bullying situations.

Now Dr. Stern has moved into a more direct self-help mode with the publication of The Gaslight Effect Recovery Guide (2023). My copy of the book just arrived the other day. It is a practical, informative, workbook-style guide, and I am happy to recommend it. Among other things, it includes a standalone section for workplace-related gaslighting that many readers of this blog may find very useful.

But that’s not all! It turns out that Dr. Stern has been very busy. She has also launched The Gaslight Effect Podcast (link here), and two of the first twelve episodes are expressly about gaslighting at work.

In addition, last year she penned an important Psychology Today piece (link here) that merits a read, “When It’s Gaslighting, and When It Really Isn’t.” Here’s a snippet:

But as the word “gaslighting” gained currency, it began to lose meaning: People often tell me that someone gaslighted them when in fact, what they are describing is mere disagreement.

…It’s worth revisiting what gaslighting is and what it isn’t.

…Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse where one person’s psychological manipulation causes another person to question their reality. Gaslighting can happen between two people in any relationship. A gaslighter preserves his or her sense of self and power over the gaslightee, who adopts the gaslighter’s version of reality over their own.

It’s important to distinguish gaslighting from disagreeing and to understand when conflict veers into gaslighting.

I hasten to add that Dr. Stern is hardly an opportunist when it comes to building her body of work about gaslighting. Rather, she has been a pioneer, having authored the first edition of The Gaslight Effect in 2007, a time when gaslighting as we understand it was barely in our vocabulary of interpersonal mistreatment. She has been ahead of this (twisted) curve, and now her expertise has made her a leading authority on this topic.

Popular 2022 posts

Image courtesy of citypng.com

Hello dear readers, and welcome to the New Year! I collected ten of the most popular 2022 posts on work-related themes. If you missed them earlier or would like to take another look, then here’s your chance to read them:

• “Gaslighting” is the Merriam-Webster 2022 “word of the year” (Dec. 2022) (link here)
• Watching “Gaslight” (1944): One viewer’s guide (Oct. 2022) (link here)
• Workplace bullying and mobbing: Annotated recommended book list for 2022 (Aug. 2022) (link here)
• We need to dig beneath generic references to “toxic workplaces” (Aug. 2022) (link here)
• “The Wire” as work primer (July 2022) (link here)
• The Amy Wax situation: On academic freedom, diversity & inclusion, workplace mobbing, and cancel culture (July 2022) (link here)
• Dr. Martha Stout on outsmarting sociopaths (including those at work) (June 2022) (link here)
• On disability bullying (March 2022) (link here)
• Bullying, mobbing, and incivility in the healthcare workplace (Feb. 2022) (link here)
• A degrading money grab for classroom supplies in South Dakota (Jan. 2022) (link here)

“Gaslighting” is the Merriam-Webster 2022 “word of the year”

 

Back in October, I shared a short viewer’s guide to the 1944 film Gaslight (link here), noting that it inspired the pop psych term gaslighting, which is “now used to characterize psychologically manipulative and controlling behaviors in interpersonal relationships, the political realm, and — of course — our workplaces.”

Well, little did I know that the folks at the venerable Merriam-Webster dictionary would designate gaslighting as their “word of the year” for 2022! Here’s Leanne Italie, reporting for the Associated Press (link here):

“Gaslighting” — behavior that’s mind manipulating, grossly misleading, downright deceitful — is Merriam-Webster’s word of the year.

Lookups for the word on merriam-webster.com increased 1,740% in 2022 over the year before. But something else happened. There wasn’t a single event that drove significant spikes in curiosity, as it usually goes with the chosen word of the year.

…“It’s a word that has risen so quickly in the English language, and especially in the last four years, that it actually came as a surprise to me and to many of us,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s unveiling.

“It was a word looked up frequently every single day of the year,” he said.

This is Merriam-Webster’s definition of gaslighting (link here):

: psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one’s emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator

To learn more

I’m re-sharing a book recommendation and some earlier pieces here on gaslighting, especially as it pertains to the workplace:

To learn more about the dynamics of gaslighting, I recommend: Robin Stern, The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life (2018 paperback ed.).

Past blog posts:

2012-2020: When gaslighting went mainstream (2021)

Gaslighting exists, and it’s horrible, so we should invoke the term carefully (2020)

Institutional gaslighting of whistleblowers (2018)

Reissued for 2018: Robin Stern’s “The Gaslight Effect” (2018)

Gaslighting at work (2017, rev. 2018)

Inauguration Week special: “Gaslighting” goes mainstream (2017)

Is gaslighting a gendered form of workplace bullying? (2013)

Gaslighting as a workplace bullying tactic (2012, rev. 2017)

Watching “Gaslight” (1944): One viewer’s guide

On Friday evening, I hosted an online discussion of the movie Gaslight, the 1944 thriller that gave rise to the pop psych term gaslighting, a term now used to characterize psychologically manipulative and controlling behaviors in interpersonal relationships, the political realm, and — of course — our workplaces.

This session was part of a film discussion series hosted by the University of Chicago’s Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults, an intensive, non-credit, four-year course of study of the Great Books of the Western canon. The film night discussions are among the program’s complementary activities. I’m enrolled in the Basic Program, currently as a 3rd year student. It has been an enjoyable and challenging intellectual experience. (Go here for a personal account of the program during my first year.)

I offered to host a film night about Gaslight because I realized that, despite the growing use of the term gaslighting, it’s quite possible that many folks have never watched the movie. In fact, I hadn’t seen the movie in years and wondered if it would hold up as a dramatic story, rather than simply being the inspiration for the gaslighting term as used today. Fortunately, Gaslight gave us plenty to talk about, and we didn’t spend a lot of time on its contemporary relevance.

For those of you who would like to do your own viewing of Gaslight, the following notes are slightly edited from what I posted for those attending the film night:

How to Watch

• Search “Gaslight 1944 streaming” for options. You will likely pay a small rental fee, around $3.
• Gaslight is also available on DVD. Look for the WB Archive Collection print.
• Don’t confuse an earlier, 1940 British production with the 1944 American production. The 1944 production has received the most critical attention.

Short Intro from imdb.com

“Ten years after her aunt was murdered in their London home, a woman returns from Italy in the 1880s to resume residence with her new husband. His obsessive interest in the home rises from a secret that may require driving his wife insane.”

Main Cast and Recognitions

• Charles Boyer as Gregory Anton (Academy Award nominee)
• Ingrid Bergman as Paula Alquist (Academy Award winner)
• Joseph Cotton as Brian Cameron
• May Whitty as Miss Thwaites
• Angela Lansbury as Nancy (Academy Award nominee)
• Barbara Everest as Elizabeth

Directed by George Cukor

Also, Gaslight won an Academy Award for “Best Art Direction – Black and White” and received Academy Award nominations for “Best Motion Picture,” “Best Screenplay,” and “Best Cinematography – Black and White.”

A Starter List of Questions

I provided these questions in advance to the film night attendees. If you’ve never watched the film before and wish to screen it “fresh” as a drama, then I suggest viewing it before reading through these questions.

• What are your impressions of the opening sequences?
• Is this a slow-developing storyline or are you grabbed from the start?
• We know early on that Gregory is not a nice guy. How does that shape the suspense of the film? Charles Boyer was nominated for an Oscar. Is he a believable gaslighter?
• Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for her performance. What do you think of her portrayal of Paula? Is her psychological descent believable? Before the final scenes, are there points where she appears to be comprehending what Gregory is doing to her?
• Are Pauline and Gregory believable as a couple?
• Put on your amateur psychologist hat (unless you’re a real psychologist). What psychological dynamics and psychiatric conditions are captured by the behaviors of, and interactions between, Paula and Gregory?
• Nancy, Elizabeth, and Miss Thwaites are significant supporting characters. How do they contribute to the overall story?
• Is the main storyline credible? Do you have to suspend disbelief at any time to go along for the ride?
• What do you think of the film’s use of foreshadowing, lighting, and music? Were these techniques effective or too heavy-handed?
• The heart of the film is set in 1880s London. What are your images of the city during that era?
• Brian Cameron is a Scotland Yard detective who sees an entry point back into a cold case. Does this work as a cold case drama?
• Compare the portrayals of men and women main characters in the film, especially against the backdrop of the historical period depicted. What gendered stereotypes appear?
• Do you have any favorite scenes in the film? (A personal favorite: What is the symbolism of the scene in the Tower of London?)
• Among popular film genres, how many different categories does Gaslight capture or at least hint at? Is the film “Hitchcockian”?
• Does the film portray gaslighting behavior similarly to how the term is now being used in our contemporary discourse — to characterize highly manipulative and controlling behaviors in interpersonal relationships, political communications, and workplace settings?
• Is Gaslight a classic, or is it simply an entertaining film that gave rise to a term that has entered our popular culture?
• For those drawn to the gaslighting theme, are there any other films or television series that you would recommend?

To Learn More

Search the film title and you’ll find plenty of good commentaries about it.

The Wikipedia entry is very informative, but be advised that it includes many spoilers.

To learn more about the dynamics of gaslighting, I recommend: Robin Stern, The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life (2018 paperback ed.).

***

Also, I’ve posted many articles about gaslighting to this blog. For example:

2012-2020: When gaslighting went mainstream (2021)

Gaslighting exists, and it’s horrible, so we should invoke the term carefully (2020)

Institutional gaslighting of whistleblowers (2018)

Reissued for 2018: Robin Stern’s “The Gaslight Effect” (2018)

Gaslighting at work (2017, rev. 2018)

Inauguration Week special: “Gaslighting” goes mainstream (2017)

Is gaslighting a gendered form of workplace bullying? (2013)

Gaslighting as a workplace bullying tactic (2012, rev. 2017)

On disability bullying

We have long known that children who have disabilities are more likely to experience bullying behaviors than their peers who are perceived as being non-disabled. The National Bullying Prevention Center (link here), for example, shares that in 10 U.S. studies examining “the connection between bullying and developmental disabilities, all of these studies found that children with disabilities were two to three times more likely to be bullied than their nondisabled peers.”

Indeed, search the term “disability bullying” and you’ll find the top hits centering almost exclusively around bullying of kids with disabilities. I’m glad that we have established that connection. At the very least, it validates the experiences of those being targeted and helps us to focus on preventive and responsive measures.

What about bullying of adults with disabilities?

We see less attention given to bullying of adults who have disabilities. That’s among the reasons why I welcomed a recent column by disability expert Andrew Pulrang, “The Many Flavors Of Disability Bullying” (Forbes.com, link here):

There are few things as simply and straightforwardly awful as bullying disabled people. But there is so much more to do about ableist bullying than just condemning it.

Ableist bullying is surprisingly difficult to recognize and understand, because it’s more than one thing, and has has many facets and flavors.

Pulrang goes on to identify predominant forms of bullying behaviors directed at adults with disabilities:

• “Simple, superficial mockery,” such as making fun of appearances, physical movements, and mental health conditions;
• “Dismissing complaints” over problems that persons with disabilities might face;
• “Portraying disabled people as privileged and entitled” as they struggle to deal with impairments and seek accommodations;
• Making jokes about someone’s disability in their presence, as if to test their sense of humor; and,
• Gaslighting disabled individuals into questioning their perceptions of reality.

He concludes:

To fight disability bullying, people of all backgrounds and roles need to not only refrain from these bullying behaviors, but also engage with and refute the kinds of thinking and assumptions that prompt them.

The legal angle

At times, those subjected to these forms of mistreatment may have legal recourse via civil rights and anti-discrimination laws. In workplace and public accommodations settings, the Americans with Disabilities Act figures most prominently. Here is where questions of reasonable accommodation come into play.

Furthermore, if someone is being subjected to workplace harassment because of their disability, they may have a hostile work environment claim under the ADA. However, such legal claims are hard to win. Occasional jokes or putdowns about a disability, for example, may not be sufficient to state a harassment claim under the ADA.

Ultimately…

A combination of more enlightened human behaviors and stronger legal enforcement will diminish bullying behaviors directed at people with disabilities. Obviously we have work to do on this front. If you doubt this, then consider that less than six years ago, the U.S. elected a President who cruelly mocked a reporter’s disability while on the campaign trail.

In the past, this one act would’ve been sufficient to self-torpedo any political campaign. I can only surmise that in 2016, some people voted for him in spite of this incident, while others were more inclined to vote for him because of it. Both possibilities teach us sad but important lessons about unfinished business in terms of advancing human dignity.

2012-2020: When gaslighting went mainstream

I first wrote about gaslighting behaviors in connection with workplace bullying in December 2012. Since then, gaslighting has been a recurring topic on this blog. (See below for a list of related pieces.) In preparing an essay I’m writing on the nation’s political psyche during the years 2015-20, I was curious about the degree to which gaslighting has become a mainstreamed concept in our public discourse. I did a quick series of Google searches on “gaslighting” by year, starting in 2012 and going through 2020. Here is what I found:

Google search: “Gaslighting”

Year          # “hits”

2012          26,100

2013          29,000

2014          34,500

2015          49,500

  2016          320,000

2017          87,000

 2018          126,000

 2019          155,000

 2020         204,000

Several conclusions and informed speculations become evident:

• Clearly, the year-to-year pattern in hits indicates that gaslighting has been increasingly invoked in discussions of relationships, work, and civic life.
• The difference between 2012 and 2020 represents an increase in Google hits by approximately 800 percent.
• The 2016 spike may well have been fueled by that year’s U.S. presidential election, and possibly the 2020 increase was prompted by that year’s presidential election as well.

I’m glad that this term has taken hold, because it helps many workers understand the crazy making dynamics of their workplaces. That’s an important step toward both healing from abusive work experiences on an individual level and reforming workplaces on an institutional level.

RELATED POSTS

On gaslighting specifically

Gaslighting exists, and it’s horrible, so we should invoke the term carefully (2020)

Institutional gaslighting of whistleblowers (2018)

Reissued for 2018: Robin Stern’s “The Gaslight Effect” (2018)

Gaslighting at work (2017, rev. 2018)

Inauguration Week special: “Gaslighting” goes mainstream (2017)

Is gaslighting a gendered form of workplace bullying? (2013)

Gaslighting as a workplace bullying tactic (2012, rev. 2017)

Related posts (most mention gaslighting)

Integrity catastrophes: How lying becomes an organizational norm (2019)

Workplace bullying: Blitzkrieg edition (2017)

Workplace bullying and mobbing: Toxic systems and the eliminationist mindset (2017)

Workplace bullying and mobbing stories: “Do you have a few hours?” (2017)

How insights on abusive relationships inform our understanding of workplace bullying and mobbing (2017)

Workplace mobbing: Understanding the maelstrom (2016)

Workplace bullying as crazy making abuse (2014)

The bullied and the button pushers (2014)

When superficial civility supports workplace abusers (and their enablers) (2014)

Targets of workplace bullying: The stress and anxiety of figuring out what the h**l is going on (2014)

Gaslighting exists, and it’s horrible, so we should invoke the term carefully

(Drawing copyright Aaron Maeda)

In her excellent book, The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life, (2018 pb ed. with rev. intro), Dr. Robin Stern defines gaslighting as:

a type of emotional manipulation in which a gaslighter tries to convince you that you’re misremembering, misunderstanding, or misinterpreting your own behavior or motivations, thus creating doubt in your mind that leaves you vulnerable and confused. Gaslighters might be men or women, spouses or lovers, bosses or colleagues, parents or siblings, but what they all have in common is their ability to make you question your own perceptions of reality.

From this apt definition, we can tease out two major elements of gaslighting:

First, it is intentional and targeted toward a specific individual or group. It is not accidental or inadvertent. (After all, I cannot imagine a sincere apology along the lines of oh, I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to gaslight you.)

Second, it is emotionally manipulative, designed to disorient and even frighten those on the receiving end. It’s about messing with someone’s perceptions of reality.

In short, gaslighting is a tool for taking, preserving, or abusing power. At work, it may be a component of workplace bullying and mobbing, sexual harassment, anti-union campaigns, or seemingly bizarre management pronouncements. I am glad that we have a term that captures such targeted, disorienting behaviors.

That said, there’s always the risk that the term can be overused.

In earlier posts, I predicted that now that gaslighting is becoming a more mainstream entry in our vocabulary of interpersonal abuse, it is inevitable that it will be misused or confused with other behaviors at times. I believe this is now coming true. Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed gaslighting being invoked in situations where the apparent factual circumstances did not justify its use.

Borrowing from an earlier post, gaslighting is sometimes confused with:

• an honest disagreement, even an intense or heated one;
• an argument that includes misunderstandings, sometimes on both ends;
• someone being obstinate or stubborn;
• erroneous, even confusing, directives and instructions;
• one side or multiple sides talking past, over, or through each other;
• “white lies” meant to mask a more painful or difficult truth;
• instances of incivility; or,
• an incoherent explanation.

Indeed, I recently found myself characterizing a description of someone’s behavior as gaslighting, until I had to acknowledge that their actions didn’t reach that level. I believe that using the term gaslighting has become a, well, cool way of demonstrating that we’re in the know about the lingo of emotional manipulation. It then can be used as a sharp, negative, blanket label to characterize someone else’s objectionable statements or actions, even when they don’t quite fit the definition.

Especially in situations where negative emotions escalate, it can be tempting to slap a tag of gaslighting on communications (in person, on paper, or online) that become heated. However, if we are to save the use of this term for the specific, nasty tool of mistreatment that it is, then we should not hurl it across the room, so to speak, whenever angry disagreements occur. Unfortunately, there is enough real gaslighting going on to ensure many opportunities for its continued proper use.

Integrity catastrophes: How lying becomes an organizational norm

Have you ever worked at a place where, well, it just seems that typical work-related pronouncements and conversations are big on lies and short on truth?

You’re certainly not alone in that experience, and now management consultant Ron Carucci is sharing a research study that identifies four institutional factors that contribute to lying becoming normal organizational behavior. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Carucci explains that his research team conducted a 15-year study, incorporating 3,200 interviews drawn from 210 organizational assessments, “to see whether there were factors that predicted whether or not people inside a company will be honest.”

With an emphasis on organizational measures, rather than individual personalities, their study identified four factors that contribute to a propensity to engage in frequent lies. From Carucci’s HBR piece:

• “A lack of strategic clarity. When there isn’t consistency between an organization’s stated mission, objectives, and values, and the way it is actually experienced by employees and the marketplace, we found it is 2.83 times more likely to have people withhold or distort truthful information.”
• “Unjust accountability systems. When an organization’s processes for measuring employee contributions is perceived as unfair or unjust, we found it is 3.77 times more likely to have people withhold or distort information.”
• “Poor organizational governance. When there is no effective process to gather decision makers into honest conversations about tough issues, truth is forced underground, leaving the organization to rely on rumors and gossip. . . . We found that when effective governance is missing, organizations are 3.03 times more likely to have people withhold or distort information.”
• “Weak cross-functional collaboration. . . . When cross-functional rivalry or unhealthy conflict is left unaddressed, an organization is 5.82 times more likely to have people withhold or distort truthful information. . . . Divisional loyalties paint those outside the team as an enemy to be feared, resented, or blamed.”

Taken together, these characteristics can be deadly for organizational integrity, but Carucci emphasizes that positive change is possible:

Because the factors are cumulative, an organization afflicted with all four is 15 times more likely to end up in an integrity catastrophe than those who have none. But that doesn’t have to be the case. By taking aim at these four issues, you can make it far more likely that your company will create the culture of honesty you, your employees, and your customers eagerly want.

Integrity catastrophe. I like that term. It says a lot.

Human impacts

As a consultant, Carucci’s focus is understandably on company performance, so his emphasis isn’t so much on how an organizational culture of dishonesty affects workers on the ground level. But we know that in its more toxic manifestations, that experience can be demoralizing, stressful, and head-spinning. It also promotes more of the same.

At the more extreme end, we have the practice of gaslighting, a form of deliberate manipulation intended to disorient, confuse, and frighten those on the receiving end. In “Gaslighting at work” (revised 2018), I wrote this about managerial pronouncements:

We may think of gaslighting as being targeted at individuals, but sometimes it’s a group experience on the receiving end.

When an executive, manager, or senior administrator invokes the term “transparency” (or some variant), and it feels like they’re merely being transparent about being opaque, that’s potential gaslighting. When the human resources office announces changes in employee relations policies that offer more “flexibility,” “freedom to choose,” or “streamlining” that will advantage all, when in reality it means lower or fewer benefits and/or more hassle, that’s potential gaslighting.

If your response upon hearing such pronouncements is along the lines of “hold it, this makes no sense” or “do they really think I’m that stupid?!,” well, then, look for the gaslight.

Lose-lose

When I talk about workplace bullying, I often invoke the term “lose-lose.” In organizations rife with bullying behaviors, workers suffer, and the organizational performance suffers. The same goes for organizational cultures of dishonesty, which breed distrust, cynicism, fear, and anger. Cheers to Ron Carucci and his team for highlighting key institutional factors that fuel habitual lying, and for suggesting that it doesn’t have to be this way.

Sarkis: How to identify a gaslighter

Joining the growing literature on gaslighting behaviors is Dr. Stephanie Sarkis’s Gaslighting: Recognize Manipulative and Emotionally Abusive People — and Break Free (2018). Sarkis is both a counselor and a mediator, and her experiences in clinical practice brought gaslighting and gaslighters to her attention. The results of her work make for this welcomed contribution to our understanding.

Dr. Sarkis writes:

Gaslighters will convince us that we are crazy, that we are abusive, that we are a huge bundle of problems and no one else will want us, that we are terrible employees who haven’t been fired yet just by the grace of God, that we are terrible parents who shouldn’t have had children, that we have no idea how to manage our own life, or that we are a burden to others. They are toxic.

…Gaslighters use your own words against you; plot against you, lie to your face, deny your needs, show excessive displays of power, try to convince you of “alternative facts,” turn family and friends against you — all with the goal of watching you suffer, consolidating their power, and increasing your dependence on them.

But wait, there’s a lot more. Among other things, in a chapter titled “Who, me?,” Sarkis asks her readers to confront the ugly question: Am I a gaslighter? Consider these queries, adapted from pp. 204-205:

• Do I lie often, “even when lying doesn’t serve a purpose”?
• Do I avoid being direct in sharing my needs, instead expecting people to read my mind and know what I want — and then being upset at them for not knowing?
• Do I not know my own needs?
• Do I try to get people to do want I want, “instead of just directly asking them”?
• Do I not tell people what I want, then get back at them for not providing it?
• Do I get frustrated when others take more time than they should to do what I’d like?
• Do others tell me that my “tone of voice is sarcastic or rough”?
• Do I “have a short temper”?
• Do I “black out” and forget things I did when I was in an angry state?
• Do I see people as being “mainly selfish and out for their own needs”?

For those who answer “yes” to a lot of these questions, Sarkis offers compassionate, direct advice, rather than judgment.

Gaslighting joins Dr. Robin Stern’s excellent The Gaslight Effect (2018 ed.) (discussed earlier this year) in providing wise, accessible insights on gaslighting behaviors, their impacts, and how to respond to them. Although both books focus more on interpersonal relationships, those who are interested in bullying, mobbing, and other forms of psychological abuse at work will find plenty of relevant information and observations.

***

Related posts

Institutional gaslighting of whistleblowers (2018)

Reissued for 2018: Robin Stern’s “The Gaslight Effect” (2018)

Gaslighting at work (2017, rev. 2018)

Inauguration Week special: “Gaslighting” goes mainstream (2017)

Is gaslighting a gendered form of workplace bullying? (2013)

Gaslighting as a workplace bullying tactic (2012, rev. 2017)

 

Institutional gaslighting of whistleblowers

If you’re interested in whistleblowing and gaslighting behaviors, then I strongly recommend a piece by Retraction Watch, “How institutions gaslight whistleblowers — and what can be done.” It features an interview with Dr. Kathy Ahern (U. New South Wales, Australia), author of a new journal article on how whistleblowers are traumatized by institutional betrayal and gaslighting.

I’m going to share some snippets of the Retraction Watch interview with Dr. Ahern here, but it’s definitely worth a full look:

Whistleblower gaslighting entails officers of an institution using their authority to deceive a whistleblower so that he stays engaged in a process designed to harm him.  Employees have an expectation of support derived from social norms regarding workplace interactions and formal policies. Whistleblower reprisals have a sting of betrayal that is largely imperceptible to outsiders because gaslighting institutions use deception to exploit the employee’s trust in his employing institutions.  

***

One gaslighting strategy is to use this trust to force the whistleblower to repeatedly defend himself against bogus disciplinary charges presented as genuine complaints.  Eric Westervelt describes whistleblowers at the U.S. VA who were subjected to investigations of unspecified charges such as “creating a hostile work environment” or “abuse of authority”, although subsequent FOI requests yielded no details of the charges.  As a gaslighting strategy, the dual purpose of false charges is to both discredit and exhaust the whistleblower.

***

Descriptions of whistleblower experiences and outcomes in the literature show a constellation of symptoms that are very similar to complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) typically found in survivors of child abuse.  It is hypothesized that the abuse by a trusted, more powerful adult leads to a general distrust of self and others. Adults with C-PTSD have trouble regulating intense negative emotions, and feel disconnected to other people. 

***

The other symptom I see in targets of whistleblower gaslighting is a desperate urgency to be believed.  This looks a lot like an “obsession,” but as with the “paranoia,” it is not the result of a mental disorder.  It is more like the normal response of someone who spent 10 years in jail for crime he didn’t commit. Such a person is indefatigable in pursuit of having his name cleared, as are targets of whistleblower gaslighting who also are intent upon clearing their names and reputations. 

Folks, there’s so much here that will resonate with individuals who have experienced or witnessed institutional responses to whistleblowing. For those who want to read Dr. Ahern’s scholarly take on this, please look at her journal article, “Institutional Betrayal and Gaslighting: Why Whistle-Blowers Are So Traumatized.”

In short, this is very important work.

If you’d like to read more about gaslighting behaviors generally, Dr. Robin Stern’s The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life, (2018 pb ed. with rev. intro) is the best general treatment of the topic.

And here are some of my previous entries on gaslighting:

Gaslighting at work (2017, rev. 2018)

Is gaslighting a gendered form of workplace bullying? (2013)

Gaslighting as a workplace bullying tactic (2012, rev. 2017)

***

Hat tip to Dr. Kenneth Pope for the Retraction Watch piece.