Narrator: Imagine being a top executive named Liz, poised to take over your company's New York office. But at the last minute, a new boss is brought in. He seems charming, but soon you notice you’re being left out of major meetings. Rumors spread that you’ve told clients you no longer want to work with them. When you complain to colleagues, they look at you with bewilderment, insisting your new boss only ever praises you. Finally, you confront him. He has a plausible explanation for every incident and gently suggests you’re being "too sensitive," maybe even "a little paranoid," and offers you a few days off to de-stress. You feel completely disabled, knowing you’re being sabotaged but unable to convince anyone. You begin to question your own sanity. This disorienting, reality-bending experience has a name, and philosopher Kate Abramson’s book, On Gaslighting, provides a crucial framework for understanding this diabolical form of emotional manipulation.

Narrator: Gaslighting is not simply lying, dismissing someone, or making them feel bad. Abramson argues it is a distinct and insidious form of emotional manipulation with a very specific aim: to make someone question their own sanity. The term itself originates from the 1944 film Gaslight, which provides the quintessential example. In the film, a husband named Gregory systematically manipulates his wife, Paula, to make her believe she is losing her mind. His goal is to have her committed so he can steal her hidden jewels. He dims the gaslights in their home and, when she points it out, flatly denies it, insisting she’s imagining things. He hides her belongings, like a brooch, and then accuses her of misplacing them, chipping away at her confidence in her own memory. This isn't a single act but a sustained campaign. It is this targeted attack on a person's ability to trust their own perception, memory, and judgment that separates gaslighting from other forms of mistreatment. It is an attempt to destroy a person's sense of reality from the inside out.

Narrator: Why do gaslighters choose such a complex and cruel method? Abramson explains that the gaslighter’s ultimate goal is not just to win an argument or get their way; it is to destroy the very possibility of disagreement. The book posits that gaslighters are driven by an unbearable anxiety when their worldview is challenged. They cannot tolerate a reality where another person holds a different, independent perspective. To resolve this anxiety, they must do more than just silence their target—they must dismantle the target's standing as a rational person. They need to make the target, and others, believe they are "crazy," "paranoid," or "oversensitive," so their perspective no longer qualifies as a genuine challenge. This is why gaslighting is an interpersonal phenomenon; the gaslighter is deeply invested in controlling the target's internal world. They don't just want compliance; they want the target to actually believe the distorted reality being presented, thereby eliminating them as a source of dissent.

Narrator: Gaslighters accomplish their rotten job by turning a person's most fundamental human qualities against them. Abramson identifies a "toolbox" of common methods, with trust being the master key. Gaslighters exploit the trust inherent in relationships to create doubt. They also weaponize love and empathy. In the film Pat and Mike, a character named Collier wants his fiancée, a talented golfer named Pat, to abandon her career. He doesn't forbid her from playing; instead, he expresses "concern" for her, making worried faces during her championship match. His feigned worry, disguised as love, shakes her confidence and causes her to lose. He uses her love for him as a lever to undermine her. Similarly, empathy is exploited when a victim is told to "have some sympathy" for a harasser, shifting the moral focus and invalidating the victim's own feelings. Oppressive social stereotypes—like the idea that women are "hysterical" or Black people are "irrationally angry"—are also powerful tools, used to frame the target's valid reactions as evidence of their supposed instability.

Narrator: While Abramson argues that gaslighting is an act committed by individuals, not social structures, she makes it clear that it frequently occurs in contexts of discrimination and reinforces existing power imbalances. The book provides numerous examples of gaslighting in response to protests against sexism and racism. Consider the junior academic woman who is slapped on the butt by a colleague. When she reports it, senior colleagues dismiss her by saying, "Don’t be so sensitive" or "It’s not that big a deal." This response doesn't just ignore the harassment; it actively reframes her reality, suggesting her perception of the event is flawed. Her protest against sexism is met with an attack on her sanity. Similarly, when people of color point to systemic police brutality, they are often told they are "merely imagining it." In these cases, gaslighting becomes a tool to preserve an unjust status quo, silencing dissent by convincing the marginalized that their perception of their own oppression is wrong.

Narrator: The harm caused by gaslighting is a "multidimensional horror show." One of its most devastating aspects is what Abramson, drawing on the work of others, calls blameless complicity. Like a victim of torture, the gaslit person is made an active participant in their own undoing. Their own mind—their ability to reason, their love for the gaslighter, their capacity for self-doubt—is turned against them. This often leads to severe psychological damage, with clinical depression being a common outcome. The book offers a powerful reframing of this depression: it is not a sign of weakness, but a form of existential grief for the loss of one's independent perspective and a fitting response to the profound violation of self. A client in therapy might say, "I know I have no right to feel this way, but..." This statement reveals the deep erosion of self-trust. Abramson suggests that this grief, this depression, can be the first signpost on the road back. If a person can grieve the loss of herself, then she is not entirely lost.

Narrator: Ultimately, On Gaslighting reveals that the true wrong of this abuse is its complexity. There is no single answer to what makes it immoral; it is a profound violation on epistemic, moral, and psychological levels simultaneously. It is a unique form of manipulation that aims not just to control, but to annihilate a person's independent standing as a moral and rational agent.

The book's greatest contribution is giving a clear name and a sharp-edged analysis to this confusing and crazy-making behavior. It provides the vocabulary to distinguish this specific form of abuse from other wrongs, which is the first and most critical step toward holding perpetrators accountable and helping victims understand that they are not, in fact, going crazy. The challenge it leaves is for us to recognize how this dynamic plays out, not just in grand cinematic fashion, but in the quiet, everyday interactions that can chip away at a person's reality, one manipulative act at a time.