(12-19-2019, 07:39 PM)Magickian Wrote: I have to say, I am really sick of the craze of media and folks following suit, of overusing the term "gaslighting" most of you really don't understand what it really means. It is a form of DEEP psychological torture, with long periods of planning to make someone lose their minds. I see so many buzzfeed articles claiming every woman's ex was gaslighting her... such bs... someone being a jerk, or someone disagreeing with you is NOT gaslighting...
Your ex did not gaslight you... if you are not in a mental ward... you were not gaslighted...
infact almost EVERY instance people use this term, they are using it wrong.
So I agree that people often misuse the term and have no idea what they are talking about. It has become quite "pop culture" and in the process is being watered down.
However, I fundamentally disagree as well. As a pastor I find myself in a lot of counseling situations where I get to see behind the veil of human behavior and I can say 100% without a doubt, based on a decade plus of experience that gaslighting is becoming more and more prevalent in our culture. We live in a culture that is currently nurturing psychopathic narcissistic tendencies in almost every corner. Narcissists love to use gaslighting as a tactic to manipulate and it really is becoming ubiquitous in our culture. The world's foremost expert on narcissism (Sam Vaknin, a recovering narcissist himself) suspects that most CEOs and leaders in our culture are diagnose-able narcissists. These men and women are then culture-setters for the rest of society. Their dysfunction (which is rewarded in many contexts) then spreads to the rest of us. A sort of "social-contagion" one might say.
I have come to see that narcissism and psychopathy are a spectrum (as well as gaslighting). Narcissism or gaslighting are not black/white, on/off kind of binary things (to look at them in such a way is to use old and outdated forms of identification and diagnosis). There are of course the most extreme ends and then there are much less extreme forms (and then everything in between). But just because the extreme ends exist (which you are talking about) does not mean that less extreme forms are not narcissism or gaslighting in their own way.
For the record, I do NOT think Fif was gaslighting whatsoever and I think the term was completely misused here. However, I do think gaslighting can very easily exist on a message board and is used relatively often by people trying to manipulate a debate by purposely confusing the reality of what has been said or is being said. Gaslighting at its heart is just causing people to doubt themselves and their own memory and perception.
Anyways, thanks for letting me stand on my soap box.
P.S. Check out this video for some of the best analysis on narcissism you will find:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJOthJ-bWrU