Gaslighting means to strengthen mental dominance by cleverly manipulating the victim’s psychology or situation, making the victim judge that he or she has low judgment, and eventually relying on the perpetrator of gaslighting. In a nutshell, it means to play with the other person’s heart and let them sway themselves. It’s kind of like brainwashing. Below, we have summarized the concept of gaslighting and its criticisms.
Gaslighting can occur in a variety of relationships, regardless of gender, age, or status, both as a perpetrator and as a victim. It is often thought that it occurs in places where vertical relationships such as work or the military are dominant, but in fact, it can also occur in equal and intimate relationships such as between friends and lovers.
Looking back, I’m sure everyone has experienced, directly or indirectly, an example of what might be thought of as gas lighting.
One thing that is impressive is that there are cases where the perpetrator gaslights intentionally, as well as inadvertently. A parent-child relationship is a prime example. What parents do in hopes that their children will do well is that they can implicitly approach their children as gaslighting.
Criticism of the neologism of gaslighting 가스라이팅 뜻
In fact, the word gaslighting itself is not a language established through scientific research as a professional academic term. 좋은뉴스
Gas Lighting’s origins are the classic play “Gas Lights”, in which a husband achieves his purpose by constantly making his wife question her own way of thinking. Neither the story itself focuses on the husband’s psychological manipulation of his wife. The husband kills his wife to steal the jewels of the wife upstairs and turns the gas lights on and off while searching for jewels upstairs. When her wife tells her husband that her gas light is off, her husband tries to deceive her and asks why she says her gas light is off when her gas light is on, and she gives her a pin. Her wife is so confused by her husband’s lies that she continues to make her really think she’s mistaking herself. The act itself came from the process of trying to cover up her own crime, but it is not about brainwashing her wife to control her at will.
These days, the word gaslighting has come up anew, and thanks to the convenience (?) and legitimacy (?) of the language, there are cases where the word gaslighting is used and abused in any case. The word gaslighting is brought to normal everyday interactions such as conflicts of opinion between parents and children and light quarrels between lovers, so that they act as if the other party is at fault and act as if they were a victim of gaslighting, giving them legitimacy.
According to the description of gaslighting, the victim is psychologically helpless and only thinks and acts according to the words of the gaslighting perpetrator. They don’t even have the psychological space to be angry about being gaslighted.
It is said that there are separate words in German to refer to unusual situations, such as ‘Schadenfreude’, meaning “the joy of another’s little misfortune,” and ‘Waldeinsamkeit’, meaning “the peaceful loneliness in the woods.” Gaslighting, like those words, feels like an abbreviation to comfortably describe a specific situation.
It seems that there may be a case where the other party is accusing you of trying to gaslight yourself, and conversely, gaslighting the other person. It makes the other person feel guilty and manipulates their psychology.
Gaslighting in my opinion
However, if you look at the various incidents taking place in our society, you can see that there are quite a number of cases where the perpetrator mentally oppresses the victim and uses it. Mental abuse as well as financial fraud are examples of gaslighting. Personally, the word gaslighting is not a technical term, but I think the existence of the word itself can prevent some damage from psychological errors that occur in human relationships.
When I first heard about gaslighting, it was also an opportunity for me to become suspicious of many irrational human relationships and social systems that I had taken for granted before. Leaving aside whether or not gaslighting is academic content, there seems to be no reason not to use this word if it helps to protect one’s self-esteem and maintain a healthy mental state. Of course, as long as it doesn’t harm the mental state of others.