Hello Jackie, I'm Sam.
HiSam, welcome. Welcome. It's such an honor to have you with us today.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
Today we are supposed to discuss gaslighting, I understand.
Right. Gaslighting awareness and recovery.
Yes.
So if you allow me, I will open with a kind of three to five minute introduction to gaslighting in the clinical sense.
I'm a professor of clinical psychology. I'm not a clinician.
So I tend to gravitate towards academic knowledge.
But it's useful to agree on a terminology, and then to make a distinction between the way the victim experiences gaslighting and the way the perpetrator thinks about gaslighting.
So let's start with the definition.
Clinically, we believe that gaslighting should include three elements.
Number one, an asymmetry of power, asymmetry, a lack of symmetry of power.
So that the gaslighter is perceived as somehow authoritative with the ability to define reality.
In other words, the gaslighter has the capacity to establish what we call reality testing.
Gaslighter becomes the interface to reality.
That's condition number one.
Condition number two is that the gaslighting, the act of gaslighting, is premeditated. It's deliberate. It's part of a plan. It involves cunning and scheming and sometimes an elaborate production in order to deceive or mislead the victim.
And the third element is by far most important in my view, and that is that the gaslighter is able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. In other words, that the person effectuating the gaslighting is not delusional.
And so now let's apply these three criteria to the victim and to the perpetrator.
See what happens. Very surprising things happen, actually, when we apply these.
For example, narcissists. Narc narcissists are delusional.
They are fully committed and invested in their fantasies. They believe their fantasies. They believe their lies and their deceptions and their promises.
So, narcissists actually do not gaslight and they do not future fake because they are too delusional to realize the difference between reality and fantasy between the world as it is and delusion. They're simply delusional and then they delude everyone around them.
Psychopaths, however, do gaslight. Psychopaths are goal-oriented. They are ruthless. They are callous. They are disinhibited. They are defiant. They are contumacious. They reject authority. And so and so forth.
And this sets the ground for an attempt to redefine reality in a way which would be highly Machiavellian, highly manipulative. And of course, would result in some outcomes which are favorable and beneficial to the psychopath.
So psychopaths gaslight, narcissists fall in the trap of their own fantasies and deceptions and so.
However, from the victim's point of view, there's no difference. The victim experiences both the narcissist and the psychopath as gaslighters, because both narcissists and psychopaths try to falsify the victim's ability to grasp reality and gauge it appropriately.
Both of them try to supplant the victim's grasp of reality and perception of reality with their own for different reasons. The narcissist does it because he's mired, is immured and is immersed in fantasy. And the psychopath does it because he wants your money or he wants to have sex with you or he wants to have power over you somehow.
But the victim couldn't care less. Why would the victim care about the etiology or the motivations of the psychopathic and narcissism? The outcome is identical.
So this is kind of set the stage for our conversation.
Thank you.
Thank you for that. I think it's very important to differentiate and have an understanding between both, you know, and the reason behind it.
And just to introduce myself, I'm Jackie Yates, and I'm a therapist to group and individual therapy for many years. I also facilitate groups at Circles and, you know, Circles is a leading platform providing group therapy for navigating narcissistic abuse and I think it's been so beneficial in helping members who feel so isolated from manipulative tactics like gaslighting, come together and connect and be able to share their experiences.
Like you've said, we will go into gaslighting.
So I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are, Professor, is it more of, I know it's a variety of factors, but when we're looking at the, you know, more of a, is a conditioned response or a learned behavior. Where does the distinction lie coming from it being narcissistic to psychopathic, more manipulative or more grandiose in that effect? Does that make sense?
Yeah.
I think a better word to use would be psychopathic rather than sociopathic. But sociopath is the old term for psychopath actually.
So the narcissist is committed to a fantasy. It's a shared fantasy. It's a fantasy which incorporates a narcissist and the narcissist's intimate partner or friend or whoever.
And the narcissist uses a distortion of reality or distorts reality in order to adapt it to the fantasy. The fantasy rules, reality has to adopt.
It reminds me of Albert Einstein. Someone asked him, what if your prediction regarding light passing by the sun wouldn't pan out, wouldn't, you know? And he said, well, then the sun has a problem.
So it's the same here, you know. Reality has a problem. The fantasy rules.
So this is the main motivation of the narcissist. He is not so much interested in manipulating you.
Narcissists are not goal-oriented. The only thing the narcissist is looking for is what we call narcissistic supply, which is essentially attention.
So narcissists are addicts, they're junkies, they're junkies of narcissistic supply.
And the best way to secure narcissistic supply is to surround yourself with people who keep telling you that the fantasy is real, that your grandiosity is grounded in truth, that you're being truthful about yourself. If you say you're a genius, then you are a genius, and so on.
So all kinds of fans and acolytes and sycophants.
And so that's the best way to secure a regular, uninterrupted flow of narcissistic supply.
And the environment that is conducive of this is a cult, essentially a cult.
So narcissists create cult-like fantasies, and they fall in their own traps. They believe their own lies and fantasies and deceptions and so on so forth.
The psychopath, as I said, is goal-oriented.
So, if you see someone who is trying to alter your perception of reality, to alter your consciousness. But his or her goal is just some kind of adulation or admiration or securing some kind of applause or affirmation or confirmation or whatever, then that's a narcissist.
But if someone is trying to alter your perception of reality and ends up saying, well, now you need to pay for this with hard cash, or now let's go to bed, or now, you know, that's a psychopath. It ends with a goal. It ends with a...
And you're right, and it's something you mentioned, is mentioned group therapy.
You're right that the only way to counter gaslighting is to have a social network, to have access to other people, other people who you can trust, other people who can provide with a counterweight to the messaging and the signaling emanating from the narcissist and the psychopath, refusing to grant the narcissist and psychopaths a monopoly on reality testing, not using the narcissists and psychopath as your only gateway to reality, but consulting others, talking to others, exposing the stratagems of the narcissists and the psychopaths, and in essence, disinfecting the environment and allowing you to develop immunity. Immunity to this viral infection, which shatters your perception of reality.
Well, I love that, you know, just infecting, because it is, it's toxic. And it's a form of dissociation.
They want you to not believe your own sense of reality. They want you to just have cognitive distortions and they want you to almost believe their own cognitive distortions and bring you into their world. So they almost want to encapsulate you, swallow you into their own world. And that's the plan.
So I like what you say is to disinfect.
And so they are like it's a viral. I like that.
So when they are in the groups and they're sharing and they feel that they're not alone and also by you know it's about power and control and isolation so they now know that it's not them and they don't feel so alone so it's really powerful when they start to share and you can hear that sigh of like relief. It sounds like you with my husband or it sounds like you with my wife or it sounds like you our mothers are twins. You know that's what you hear in the group setting and it's really nice how they do connect and they can share.
Gaslighting is very disorienting. It's very disorienting.
You are no longer sure of your own judgment. You lose trust in your own senses. You begin to conflate or confuse evidence with hearsay.
So what the narcissist says is evidence. What the psychopath says is an absolute fact. And real evidence, hard evidence, becomes dubious.
So it's a topsy-turvy world where the narcissists and psychopaths lend substitute for reality. You give up reality.
Of course, this requires certain initial vulnerabilities. We call it a pre-morbid state.
This requires a pre-morbid state in the victim.
In other words, not everyone would be amenable to gaslighting. There is inbuilt resistance to gaslighting in almost all of us.
Now, some people take it too far and they become conspiracy theories. And some people are just engaged in critical thinking.
But I would say the overwhelming majority of people are pretty immune to gaslighting.
So people who do fall for gaslighting, they have inbuilt pre-morbid initial vulnerabilities.
For example, they may be very insecure, generally speaking, about everything, not only about reality, especially about themselves. They may have problems with authority. They may over-respect authority. We call it over-perception. They may have an over-perception of authority, I'm sorry. They may be willing to sacrifice a lot in order to secure the longevity or the presence of the intimate partner, including their own sanity, essentially, and so on and so forth. So there may be people pleasers who will tell you what you want to hear.
And gradually, this habituation when you tell the narcissist or the psychopath, yes, you're right, yes, you're right, yes, right. Just to please them, gradually, it becomes a form of brainwashing.
You're in training yourself. You become your own worst enemy. You self-gaslight, in effect.
Self-gaslighting is a major component of gaslighting. Gaslighting is a collusion. It's a collaboration. It's a tango. Both participants engage in gaslighting. The one engages in gaslighting the other and the recipient or the victim self-gaslights, adopts this framework.
So if you're a person who fails to make sense of the world, you perceive the world as arbitrary, chaotic, threatening, intimidating, incomprehensible, and so on so forth, then you would suspend your judgment gladly and easily.
When someone comes along, displays self-confidence, and tells you, I know better or I know best, if you were just to follow me, you wouldn't be responsible for your actions then, because I would make the decisions and so.
So this gaslighting is not limited to individual interpersonal relationships. There's a lot of gaslighting in politics, for example.
Of course.
It's also a collective phenomenon.
Absolutely.
And I also wanted to ask you, because it's being brought up a lot in groups and individually, but also of late, gaslighting by proxy.
So, you know, obviously with the, you know, flying monkeys, triangulation.
And could it be, I wanted to ask your advice on this, narcissistic parental alienation, could that be a form of gaslighting by proxy, where a parent would alienate their child and use the child as a flying monkey? Would the child be used as a flying monkey? Could that be by proxy?
Anyone can be used as a flying monkey. As I said before, it's a cult-like setting. You can set up a cult with a single adherent or a single follower, which could be a child. You can set up a cult with 40 million people, and then you become president.
So these are cult-like settings.
And within a cult, there is a suspension of disbelief, a suspension of critical judgment, and a total obeisance, so total submissiveness when it comes to the leader.
And so a cult is a hive mind. It's a single mind, actually. It's known as the cult mind in clinical literature. It's a hive mind, actually. It's known as the cult mind in clinical literature. It's a hive mind.
And when this hive mind interacts with a potential victim or with someone external, an outsider, it has the advantage of simulating a multiplicity of independent minds.
So a cult mind masquerades as if it is not a cult mind, not a single mind, not a hive mind, but just an agreement or a consensus between multiple people.
Well, actually, that's not the case at all.
So I had a friend who used to say, if someone tells you that you are drunk, you can safely ignore them. If two people tell you you're drunk, you can safely ignore them. But if three people tell you you're drunk, go to sleep.
So numbers count.
Numbers count. The ability to mobilize an army of yes-sayers, an army of people who would agree with you in a way.
And this ability is crucial in gaslighting because then you can destabilize the victim much more.
In other words, if you're alone with the victim the victim might still retain her critical thinking and an ability to negate your messaging.
But what if you confront the victim together with 10 other family members? And all of you are saying the very same thing. And none of you are telling the victim, you're wrong. Your perception of reality is wrong. Something is wrong with you. You're crazy. You are unstable.
Well, that has weight. Numbers quantity converts into quality in this case.
Definitely. Definitely.
So in your opinion, I mean, when we look at generally when we're in groups and we speak about recovery and I think we focus on awareness, awareness and identifying what gas lighting is is very important.
Trying to establish or reconnect and finding trust within yourself again because you lose a lot of trust because of loss of self-identity.
And, you know, I think journaling, mindfulness, being able to fact check.
One member, I remember she said that her partner kept on hiding the keys. She kept putting the keys in the exact same space and he said he'd never seen them. She must be losing her mind, you know.
And so another member had actually, this was in the group, had said she should take pictures. And she started doing that. And she, you know, took pictures and that was her reality checking. And that helped her a great deal.
So she had now the evidence and she was checking for herself, also most importantly for herself, that she wasn'tthe evidence and she was checking for herself, also most importantly for herself, that she wasn't losing her mind. So it was very helpful and it was great to see that she was getting the trust back within herself.
So things like that were encouraged and just, you know, identifying any unhealthy behaviors. And like you said, just eliminating the toxic people.
I think the minute you start to doubt yourself, I mean, the inception of gaslighting is easily recognizable. It's the first time you ask yourself, is my memory, has my memory somehow gone awry? Can I trust my perception of what has happened or what is happening?
The minute you start to doubt yourself, that's the onset of gaslighting.
At that moment, you have to develop humility. You have to become humble. You have to say, I can no longer trust myself to gauge reality and to evaluate it and to perceive it appropriately. I can no longer do that. I have lost this capacity.
I therefore need to resort to external means, such as photographs, videos, journaling, resorting to third parties, as witnesses, other forms of evidence.
You need to outsource your reality testing, but to outsource it to, preferably, to outsource it to objective activities, such as journaling and so on.
But you need to outsource it, definitely. You no longer can trust yourself from that moment on.
But to do that, you need to be humble. It requires a lot of humility.
And most people lack this.
So they'd rather be gaslighted or gas lit than admit that they are essentially weak and vulnerable and fragile.
And so this is step number one.
Then you engage in all the activities which you mentioned, which you've mentioned, which I think are great, yes, absolutely. You need to document reality all the time.
Think of yourself, consider yourself from that moment on, as a documentary filmmaker. You're a documentary filmmaker and you're documenting your life.
So this is stage two, the documentary filmmaking thing.
And stage three, you need to create a circle of trust.
You need to surround yourself with several people, not one, not two, not three. Don't fall in the same trap again.
But you need to surround yourself with two, three, four, five people whose opinions you could trust because they are disinterested.
So strangely, friends are not so helpful, intimate friends are not so helpful because they're likely to tell you what you want to hear.
And there's always this lurking suspicion. Are they telling me this because they want to calm me down because they love me or are they telling me this because this is reality.
So you need to rely on three, four, five people who are disinterested in you, have no interest in you, are not emotionally invested in you, not your good friends, not, you know, your banker, your lawyer, your accountant, your grocery guy, you know, the pizza delivery guy. Someone absolutely objective.
And you need to create a circle of trust. And then, whenever you're in doubt about reality, you need to refer to all of them.
And I call this operation, this activity, kind of activity, I call it polling.
You need to create an opinion poll about reality. And you poll them, polling like P-O-L-L. My accent is very thick.
No, it's great. I understand.
So pulling.
You need to pull reality among these four or five people in your circle of trust.
So if you document everything as a documentary filmmaker would do, and if you consult your editorial board, this circle of trust, your producers, if you wish, then you are bound sooner or later to emerge from the gaslighting.
Because you're bound to come across so many contradictions between the opinions of the people in the circle of trust, between the documented evidence, and what the psychopath analysis is are telling you, that you will soon lose trust in them as guardians of reality, and you will have regained your reality testing.
And you can do that while in a relationship with narcissists and psychopaths. You don't need to wait until you break up with them. You can do that while you're in there.
It's very dangerous to be subject to gaslighting because it's a manipulative, machiavellian, it's a manipulative technique that is essentially insidious and pernicious.
And as I said, in many respects, goal-oriented.
Ultimately, the narcissist wants you to become a zombie in a shared fantasy. So you'll be zomified.
And the psychopath wants to take your money or sexually assault you or have power over you in some way and get to someone else through you. And so on.
So it could be dangerous.
Indeed, the two movies, there were two movies in 1940. They were titled Gaslight. And the word gaslighting comes from these movies.
And in both movies, the woman in the movie, who is the victim, is at risk. She is, her life is threatened.
The gaslighting is an integral part of a bigger scheme to actually assassinate a killer.
So gaslighting is very dangerous, shouldn't be taken lightly at all.
No.
No.
Definitely not.
I think it's very important to, as you identified, like you say, the minute you doubt, everything that you said was really important.
And, you know, prioritize your feelings over being right.
You know, I'm going to say something a bit strange.
When you're with the narcissist or a psychopath and you're beginning to doubt your reality testing, you begin to doubt your perception and gauging of reality, become a conspiracy theorist.
Assume the worst. Assume that there's some kind of conspiracy against you. Develop paranoid ideation.
These are pathologies. These are not healthy things.
But these are not healthy things within healthy environments.
But when the environment is sick, when the environment is unhealthy, sometimes some coping strategies, even though they are essentially pathological, are positive adaptations.
In other words, paranoid ideation when you're with the narcissists and the psychopath is highly recommended.
Yes.
To assume that you are the subject of a conspiracy is pretty safe, actually.
So do that.
Yes.
And do your research all the time.
All the time do research.
I mean, if the psychopath tells you it's 5 o'clock, run to the nearest watch. If it tells you it's Wednesday, look at the calendar.
Distrust, even the most evident statements, statements which are ostensibly low. Distrust everything.
That's paranoid ideation. Be hyper vigilant. Be on your toes.
Because gaslighting starts small. It's Wednesday. It's not Tuesday. That's how it starts. It starts very small.
Yesterday we ate chicken, not meat, you know? No, you're wrong about that. It was chicken. It wasn't meat.
It doesn't start big. You know, I'm going to take all your money and rape you.
It's small. Very small.
And that's the insidious nature.
And I wanted to just ask you also, because, you know, we had varying different cases, but some partners will agree to go for counseling.
But there's a bigger, and from what I'm hearing you say, and I don't know, I mean, I never, but there's a bigger game. It's not for the real purpose of getting better, or changing or growing or healing, shall I say.
So.
You read whether the partner is a narcissist or a psychopath?
Yes.
It's totally manipulative.
This is so, and so, and I'm going to ask you, and I've always thought because like any, you know, being in training and experience was, unless a person wants to change, to grow themselves, it's not going to happen.
Unless you want to change or for your own self, it's not that you can do, you can, you only have control over your behaviors, your responses, your reactions.
So, anything's possible, but if you don't want to do it yourself, it's not going to happen, right? I mean, what are your thoughts on that?
And if you drag your narcissistic or psychopathic partner into the therapy setting, couple therapy or whatever, that's a form of gaslighting. That's a form of self-gaslighting. You're gaslighting yourself, because the reality is this therapy would be useless.
And what you're doing, you're gaslighting yourself. You're saying, no, the reality is this therapy would be useless. And what you're doing, you're gaslighting yourself. You're saying, no.
The reality is that there's hope.
This is pathological hope. That's what I call malignant optimism. It's not healthy. You'd better face reality, and the reality is that narcissists and psychopaths are hopeless.
Certain behaviors of narcissists can be modified. Certain behaviors, abrasive, antisocial behaviors of narcissists can be modified in therapy.
Psychopaths are completely hopeless. I mean, there's nothing can be done, not even behavior modification.
But certain behaviors can modify, but the core issues can never be touched, untouchable.
At this stage, at least, we don't have any treatment modalities that have any efficacy with narcissists. I mean, meaningful efficacy, not modifying this behavior or that behavior.
So this is a form of self-gaslighting. To say I'm going to drag my partner who is evidently a narcissist or a psychopathic or has been diagnosed even with narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial. I'm going to drag him to therapy and the therapist will affect a miracle and suddenly, you know, that's self-gaslighting.
Absolutely.
And just at a children, I think it's age 15, it might be different countries, obviously, but where an adolescent is diagnosed with conduct disorder or oppositional defiant disorder. Is there any kind of treatment modality there that can help to try and delay a form of?
Oppositional defiant disorder is a very controversial diagnosis. Because it implies that refusal to obey authority is some kind of mental illness. And there's a lot of debate about this.
Sounds a lot like social engineering or social control.
However, conduct disorder is a much more validated construct, a much more serious diagnosis. 40% of children with conduct disorder go on to develop full-fledged psychopathy.
So we consider conduct disorder to be psychopathy for children, or psychopathy light.
And early interventions with children with conduct disorder are pretty efficient. Prognosis is pretty good.
The problem is that in a society that is permissive, a society that is highly individualistic, a society that is increasingly more and more narcissistic and psychopathic even, there are scholars like Campbell and Twenge that they deal with these questions.
In such a society, conduct disorder would be, I mean, clinicians would be very loath to diagnose conduct disorder. They would be very averse to slapping this label on a child.
And consequently, interventions would come way too late, in adolescence, for example, where it's already way too late.
Similar situation we have with borderline personality disorder, where diagnosticians and clinicians are very afraid to tell the patient, you have borderline personality disorder, or at the very least, you're emotionally dysregulated. And they're very afraid to tell the patient you have borderline personality disorder or at the very least you're emotionally dysregulated and they're very afraid to say this and instead they mollycoddle and cozy up to the patient and that's a disservice it's a distance
But if a child were to be diagnosed with conduct disorder, especially prior to age six, but even between six and nine years old, then the prognosis is actually excellent.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of them are not. They are diagnosed with conduct disorder and adolescents. And then it's too late.
I think the...
I think the...
Yeah, they told me to limit it to 30 minutes.
Sorry. Okay. No.
Not your fault. Why do you assume responsibility to this? There's the two of us.
Okay. Well, it's so nice to chatings to you.
Thank you. I enjoy talking to you too. Okay.
Thank you so much, Professor. Thank you for your wisdom, your insight, your experience. Thank you. I enjoy talking to you too. Okay. Thank you so much, Professor. Thank you for your wisdom, your insight, your experience.
Thank you very kind of words. I hope this is not the last time. Maybe we'll talk again.
Me too. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thanks so much. Bye-bye. Take care. Bye.
You too.
Bye.