Understanding Gaslighting: A Clinical Guide for Psychotherapists

Looking Beyond the Buzzword

Few psychological terms have entered everyday language as rapidly as gaslighting. Once largely confined to discussions of intimate partner abuse and the psychoanalytic literature, the term is now heard regularly in psychotherapy offices, healthcare settings, workplaces, social media, and everyday conversations. Increasingly, our patients use the word to describe painful relational experiences, and many of us have likely found ourselves using it in clinical discussions with colleagues as well.

In many respects, this growing awareness is encouraging. For countless individuals, the concept of gaslighting has provided language for experiences that previously felt confusing, isolating, and difficult to explain. Patients often describe the relief of discovering that what they have experienced has a name. Simply being able to articulate these relational dynamics can represent an important step toward making sense of relationships that have left them doubting themselves.

At the same time, the popularity of the term presents us with an important clinical challenge.

Like many psychological concepts that have entered mainstream culture, gaslighting is sometimes used to describe a wide range of interpersonal experiences from ordinary disagreements and differing memories, to emotional invalidation, deception, coercive control, and psychological abuse. While all of these experiences may be clinically significant, they are not necessarily describing the same relational process.

For us as psychotherapists, however, our first task is not to decide whether our patient has used the “correct” word but rather to understand what the patient is attempting to communicate by choosing that word.

Like any meaningful language our patients bring into therapy, the term gaslighting becomes part of the clinical material. Rather than immediately asking, “Was this really gaslighting?” we might first become curious about the patient’s experience. What has happened within this relationship that makes this word feel like the most accurate description? What has happened to the patient’s confidence in themselves? What emotional meanings has this term come to hold?

Approaching the conversation in this way allows us to remain respectful of our patients’ subjective experience while gradually developing our own clinical formulation. Sometimes that formulation may indeed support the use of the term gaslighting. At other times, we may come to understand the relationship through concepts such as chronic emotional invalidation, coercive control, traumatic attachment, emotional abuse, or repeated misattunement. These formulations are not intended to replace the patient’s narrative but to deepen our understanding of it.

In this article, I will briefly review the origins of the term, examine how psychoanalytic writers and contemporary psychological researchers have conceptualized gaslighting, consider its relevance for trauma-informed psychotherapy, and reflect on how we might thoughtfully respond when our patients tell us they have been “gaslighted.”

From Gaslight to Gaslighting

Although the word gaslighting has become part of everyday language, its origins lie not in psychology but in literature.

The term derives from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 stage play Gas Light, later adapted into the classic 1944 film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer. The story follows Paula, a young woman whose husband systematically manipulates her into believing she is becoming mentally unstable. Unbeknownst to Paula, her husband was a thief and a murderer and they were living in the house of the woman he had murdered. One of the most memorable scenes involves the gaslights in their home, which visibly dim each evening as her husband secretly searches the attic for the hidden jewels of the woman he had murdered. The house uses a single, interconnected gas pipe system for its lighting fixtures so that when Jack turns on the lights upstairs to search the attic, the gas pressure drops across the rest of the house. Once he realized she noticed the change, he seized the opportunity to lie about it and make her doubt her sanity. Whenever Paula notices the lights changing, he calmly insists that nothing has happened. Similar interactions occur repeatedly throughout the film. Conversations are denied, objects disappear and mysteriously reappear, and Paula’s observations are consistently attributed to poor memory, emotional instability, or imagination.

What makes the story so psychologically compelling is not simply that Gregory lies. People lie in relationships every day. Rather, Hamilton portrays something much more complex: a gradual relational process through which Paula increasingly loses confidence in her own perceptions and begins relying upon her husband’s version of reality. The enduring significance of Gaslight lies not in any single deceptive act, but in the cumulative psychological effect of repeated interactions that slowly erode trust in one’s own experience.

More than eighty years later, this central insight continues to resonate with clinicians. While our understanding of gaslighting has evolved considerably, the original story reminds us that the phenomenon involves much more than disagreement or dishonesty. It describes a relationship in which another person’s confidence in their own perceptions, memories, emotions, and judgment is progressively undermined.

Psychoanalytic Perspectives

Long before gaslighting became the subject of contemporary empirical research, psychoanalytic writers had begun describing remarkably similar relational processes. One of the most influential contributions came from Theodore Dorpat in Gaslighting, the Double Whammy, Interrogation, and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis (1996).

Dorpat argued that gaslighting extends beyond simple deception. He described subtle forms of interpersonal influence that progressively undermine another person’s confidence in their own experience while increasing dependence upon the authority of another. Importantly, he also cautioned that these dynamics could emerge within psychotherapy itself – not necessarily through malicious intent, but through the unexamined use of therapeutic authority.

Dorpat’s observations remain highly relevant today. They remind us that our authority as therapists carries considerable psychological weight. Interpretations delivered with excessive certainty, repeated dismissal of a patient’s subjective experience, or premature assumptions about what the patient “really” thinks or feels can unintentionally weaken the collaborative spirit upon which effective psychotherapy depends.

His work offers an enduring reminder that good clinical practice requires humility, curiosity, and respect for the patient’s developing understanding of their own experience.

Contemporary Psychological Research

After decades of relatively limited empirical attention, gaslighting has recently become the focus of renewed psychological research.

An important contribution comes from Jennifer A. Bartz and colleagues at McGill University, particularly the theoretical work of Willis Klein, Suzanne Wood, and Jennifer Bartz, published in Personality and Social Psychology Review (2026). Their integrative model draws upon research from social cognition, attachment theory, self-verification theory, and interpersonal psychology to explain why gaslighting can be so psychologically powerful.

One of the most valuable insights from this work is that gaslighting is most likely to occur within relationships characterized by trust, dependence, or psychological significance. The very relationships in which we naturally look to others for feedback about ourselves are the relationships in which repeated distortions of our experience may have the greatest impact. Because we use close relational partners to validate ourselves and our shared reality with others, such relationships are those in which gaslighting most readily occurs (it is very difficult to be gaslighted by a stranger or mere acquaintance).  

Another interesting contribution from this recent work is the idea that gaslighting exploits ordinary cognitive and interpersonal processes that normally help people navigate reality. Importantly, this formulation reminds us that the person experiencing gaslighting is not responding in a pathological manner. They are responding in an expectable manner to a very powerful form of coercion and control in the context of a relationship of relative dependency and trust.

Interestingly, although the language differs, there is considerable convergence between these contemporary psychological models and earlier psychoanalytic observations. Both emphasize that the deepest injury of gaslighting lies not merely in deception itself but in the gradual erosion of confidence in one’s own experience.

For therapists, particularly those working with traumatized individuals, these formulations are very meaningful. Many survivors describe not only what happened to them but what happened to their relationship with themselves. Restoring that sense of trust in one’s own perceptions, emotions, and judgment often becomes a central task of the psychotherapy.

Defining Gaslighting: A Distinct Relational Process

Although researchers continue to refine the definition of gaslighting, there is growing agreement that it is best understood as more than a collection of manipulative behaviours. Rather than focusing on isolated incidents, contemporary authors increasingly describe gaslighting as a relational process that unfolds over time.

This distinction is clinically helpful.

As psychotherapists, we rarely understand our patients’ difficulties by focusing on a single interaction. We listen for patterns. We become interested in what gradually develops between people, how relationships evolve, and how repeated experiences shape the person’s sense of self. Thinking about gaslighting in this way feels entirely consistent with how many of us already practice psychotherapy.

Individual behaviours commonly associated with gaslighting – such as denial, deception, emotional invalidation, minimizing, or questioning another person’s memory – are not unique to gaslighting. People become defensive. Couples remember conversations differently. Parents occasionally dismiss a child’s feelings. Partners sometimes deny responsibility or avoid difficult truths. While these interactions may certainly be painful and deserving of clinical attention, none alone necessarily constitutes gaslighting.

What distinguishes gaslighting is the cumulative relational pattern.

Over time, the individual may move from questioning a particular conversation to questioning their own memory more generally. They may begin doubting not only what happened but whether they can trust themselves to know what happened. Gradually, confidence in one’s own perceptions, emotions, and judgment becomes increasingly fragile, while the other person’s interpretations begin to carry greater psychological authority.

From a trauma-informed perspective, this gradual erosion of self-trust may be among the most psychologically damaging aspects of gaslighting. The injury is not simply that a person has been deceived. Rather, the relationship itself begins to alter the individual’s confidence in their own experience.

I find it most clinically useful to think of gaslighting as a distinct relational process in which repeated interpersonal interactions progressively undermine another person’s confidence in their own perceptions, memories, emotions, judgment, and subjective experience, often resulting in increasing reliance upon another person’s interpretation of reality.

Whether every instance requires conscious intent remains an area of ongoing scholarly debate. Some authors emphasize deliberate manipulation as an essential feature, whereas others focus more on the relational process and its psychological consequences. As clinicians, we need not resolve that debate before becoming curious about the patient’s experience.

Responding to Reported Gaslighting in Practice

Perhaps the most important implication for psychotherapy is not how we define gaslighting, but how we respond when our patients use the term.

If a patient tells us, “My partner has been gaslighting me,” it can be tempting to begin evaluating whether the relationship meets a particular scholarly definition. Yet doing so too quickly risks moving away from the patient’s lived experience.

Instead, we might begin with curiosity.

What has the patient experienced that makes this word feel so important?

What are they attempting to communicate?

What has happened to their confidence in themselves?

How has this relationship changed the way they now understand their own thoughts, feelings, memories, or perceptions?

These questions invite exploration rather than premature classification.

Like words such as trauma, triggered, abandonment, or narcissistic, the term gaslighting has become part of the patient’s narrative. Whether our eventual formulation confirms or modifies that language is less important initially than understanding why this particular word has become meaningful.

Our role is not to police language.

Our role is to understand experience.

In many cases, the patient’s use of the term opens the door to a much richer exploration of the relational process they have endured. As therapy progresses, our formulation may evolve. We may conclude that gaslighting best captures the dynamics. We may instead conceptualize the relationship primarily in terms of coercive control, chronic emotional invalidation, psychological abuse, traumatic attachment, or another relational framework. Whatever our formulation, it should deepen – and not dismiss – the patient’s subjective understanding of what has happened.

Gaslighting in Clinical Practice: A Potential Risk for All of Us

It can be uncomfortable to consider the possibility that processes resembling gaslighting may occasionally emerge within psychotherapy itself. After all, the therapeutic relationship is intended to be a place where patients develop greater confidence in their own thoughts, feelings, and experiences – not less. Yet one of the more thought-provoking contributions of Theodore Dorpat’s work is his reminder that psychotherapy is also a relationship characterized by authority, expertise, trust, and, inevitably, a degree of power differential (Dorpat, 1996).

Most therapists enter the profession with a genuine desire to help. Nonetheless, our clinical knowledge, theoretical commitments, and confidence in our formulations can sometimes create blind spots. We naturally look for patterns, formulate hypotheses, and attempt to make sense of our patients’ experiences. These are essential aspects of psychotherapy. Difficulties arise, however, when our formulations become more important than the patient’s lived experience, or when our certainty begins to overshadow our curiosity.

For example, a patient may describe an interaction that felt profoundly humiliating, frightening, or invalidating, only to have their experience too quickly explained through the therapist’s preferred theoretical lens. A psychodynamic therapist might prematurely conclude that the patient is “projecting,” “being defensive,” “resisting,” or repeating an earlier relational pattern. A cognitive-behavioural therapist might move too quickly toward identifying cognitive distortions, challenging the patient’s interpretation of events, or reframing the situation before the patient’s subjective experience has been sufficiently understood. Similarly, therapists from any orientation may inadvertently privilege their own conceptual framework over the patient’s lived experience. Although these interventions may ultimately prove clinically meaningful, when they are offered prematurely, with excessive certainty, or repeatedly at the expense of the patient’s own perspective, they may unintentionally communicate that the therapist’s understanding of the patient’s mind is more trustworthy than the patient’s own.

Most of us have probably experienced moments in our work when a patient has responded to one of our interpretations by saying, “No, that’s not what I meant,” or “That doesn’t feel right.” These moments deserve our careful attention. While patients may certainly reject interpretations for many reasons, they also remind us that psychotherapy is not a process of replacing the patient’s understanding with our own. Rather, it is a collaborative exploration in which meanings are discovered together.

This is one reason why maintaining an attitude of clinical humility is so important. Our formulations are always provisional. They are working hypotheses to be explored, refined, revised, and, at times, abandoned altogether. Holding our ideas lightly allows room for the patient’s experience to surprise us and protects against the subtle drift from collaborative inquiry toward interpretive certainty.

Patients who have experienced chronic gaslighting are often particularly sensitive to situations in which their subjective experience appears to be dismissed or redefined by someone in a position of authority. Understandably so. Many have spent years questioning their own perceptions and may enter therapy hoping, perhaps for the first time, that someone will genuinely help them explore their experience rather than explain it away. This places a particular responsibility upon us as therapists.

Remaining mindful of this possibility does not mean abandoning interpretation or avoiding difficult conversations. Nor does it suggest that every disagreement between therapist and patient constitutes gaslighting. Rather, it reminds us that the therapeutic relationship itself should embody the very qualities that gaslighting erodes: curiosity, openness, collaborative meaning-making, respect for the patient’s subjective experience, and a willingness to tolerate uncertainty.

Perhaps one of the most important safeguards is our capacity for self-reflection. We can continually ask ourselves: Am I becoming overly attached to my formulation? Am I genuinely trying to understand my patient’s experience, or am I inadvertently trying to persuade them to adopt my own? Have I remained open to the possibility that my understanding may be incomplete? These questions are not signs of therapeutic insecurity. Rather, they reflect the humility and openness that lie at the heart of thoughtful clinical practice.

Ultimately, psychotherapy should strengthen a person’s confidence in their capacity to think, feel, remember, and make meaning of their own experience. Remaining attentive to the influence of our own authority helps ensure that therapy remains a place where patients recover trust in themselves rather than becoming increasingly dependent upon ours.

Concluding Thoughts

As the term gaslighting continues to find its way into our consulting rooms, perhaps our greatest responsibility is neither to embrace it uncritically nor to dismiss it as simply another popular psychological buzzword. Rather, it is to remain curious about what our patients are communicating when they choose this particular language to describe their experience.

Whether our eventual clinical formulation emphasizes gaslighting, coercive control, chronic emotional invalidation, traumatic attachment, or another relational process, our first task remains the same: to understand our patient’s subjective experience with openness, respect, and humility. In doing so, we not only deepen our clinical understanding, but also model something that many individuals who have experienced gaslighting have long been denied -the experience of having their perceptions taken seriously and explored collaboratively rather than dismissed or replaced by someone else’s certainty.

This commitment also invites ongoing self-reflection. Because psychotherapy is itself a relationship characterized by trust, expertise, and an inherent power differential, we must remain attentive to the possibility that our own theoretical commitments, clinical certainty, or therapeutic authority can, at times, unintentionally overshadow a patient’s lived experience. Remaining open to having our formulations questioned, revised, or even abandoned is not a sign of clinical uncertainty; it is a hallmark of thoughtful, collaborative psychotherapy. By approaching our patients with curiosity rather than certainty, we help ensure that therapy becomes a place where confidence in one’s own thoughts, feelings, memories, and perceptions is gradually strengthened rather than inadvertently undermined.

Ultimately, perhaps this is one of psychotherapy’s most important reparative capacities. While we cannot change what has happened in the past, we can offer a relationship in which patients are invited to think, reflect, question, and make meaning of their experience without fear that their reality will be dismissed or replaced by our own. For many individuals who have experienced gaslighting, this restoration of trust – in themselves, in their own minds, and within a genuinely collaborative therapeutic relationship – is one of its most meaningful outcomes of our work.

Suggested Reading

Historical Origins

• Hamilton, P. (1938). Gas Light. London: Constable.
• Dickinson, G. (Director). (1944). Gaslight [Motion picture]. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
• Calef, V., & Weinshel, E. M. (1981). Some Clinical Consequences of Introjection: Gaslighting. The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 50, 44–66.
• Dorpat, T. L. (1996). Gaslighting, the Double Whammy, Interrogation, and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson.

Contemporary Perspectives

• Abramson, K. (2014). Turning Up the Lights on Gaslighting. Philosophical Perspectives, 28(1), 1–30.
• Klein, W., Wood, S., & Bartz, J. A. (2026). A Theoretical Framework for Studying the Phenomenon of Gaslighting. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 30(2), 195–215.
• Klein, W., Wood, S., Forget, A. A., & Bartz, J. A. (2026). A Historical Review of Gaslighting: Tracing Changing Conceptualizations Within Psychiatry and Psychology. Clinical Psychology Review, 126, Article 102742.
• Stern, R. (2007). The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life. Morgan Road Books.
• Sweet, P. L. (2019). The Sociology of Gaslighting. American Sociological Review, 84(5), 851–875.