Here’s some notes I took about the first some minutes of Gaslight (1944) (SPOILER alert. It’s a very good movie, and somewhat relevant).
When he grabs the letter out of her hands he’s like “Oh uh I was just worried about all the unhappy memories it’s reminding you of”. It’s weird, it’s a double move: on the one hand, most obviously it’s a lie to cover up that he’s worried about something else, but also it reveals that he’s positioning himself as hyperconcerned about her. He doesn’t excuse it by some selfish motive like “I became super curious about the letter” or “Your talking is annoying me” or whatever. Further, his supposed concern is about her “unhappy memories”, positioning himself as an agent who takes it as a salient variable to track, what’s going on with her memories and emotions; and implicitly, that he’s an agent in the position to affect and manage her relationship with her memories and emotions.
And in the next breath, he explicitly tells her to forget all that unhappy stuff. He says “While you are afraid of anything, there cannot be any happiness for us”; “You must forget her”. This sounds sort of innocent, especially in the context of concern, but it’s ambiguous between a mere description/prediction of what will make them happy, vs. a threat of e.g. leaving or withholding happiness from her if she doesn’t follow his orders. It’s also just an obviously extreme (and implausible) statement when considered explicitly / from a third-person perspective, but in a way that could slip by as merely being high-intensity because the situation is high-intensity, rather than itself being a crazy statement.
Her only response is to say “Well, not [to forget] her, but what happened to her”. Which, now that I think of it, makes the extremeness look intentional: by making an extreme statement and command, her corrective reasoning doesn’t correct far enough. She’ll remember her aunt, but has still tacitly agreed to forget what happened to her aunt; and this constitutes a step towards buying in to him being appropriate to give her orders about what to do with her mind.
He gives her his mother’s pin as a gift, but then immediately takes it back. “You are inclined to lose things Paula.” “I didn’t realize that.” “Oh just little things.” It’s a subtle dashing of hope; supposedly she’s special enough for him to give her his heirloom, and he loves her and wants to symbolize her specialness, but then he “realizes” that she’s unreliable; it’s her fault, so *in opposition* to the motions of his naive love for her he has to maturely handle her. He’s staying in the frame of concern that he’ll keep the pin for safekepping so she doesn’t lose it. He probes with a strong claim, and then when she notes her surprise, he “clarifies”, which is in effect a subtle retreat, to a weaker and more difficult to verify claim (“just little things”); it’s just on the edge where it’s reasonable to trust someone’s report, since maybe they noticed something you didn’t, and it’s hard to falsify. He’s using her feedback about when she notices that his claims are implausible, to calibrate where and how far he can go in each case.
“There, now you’ll remember where it is.” “Oh don’t be silly, of course I’ll remember.” “Oh I was teasing you my dear.” More probing and walking-back. He reasserts his proposition about her forgetfulness, by implication (“now you’ll remember [and you wouldn’t otherwise]”); and then he pretend to not have actually been doing so; and he also implicitly asserts that she can’t tell when he’s teasing her.
“You’ve been forgetting things. Don’t worry, you’ve been tired.” “Yes that’s it, I’ve been tired.” He gives her an explanation that she can be sure will be accepted by the shared narrative; thus defusing the tension of the falsification of her experience without her having to directly contradict his false report; and thus walking her further into committing to agreeing that she’s unreliable.
He took the broach, causing her to believe she’d harmed him, then when she accepts that she’s been forgetful and is spooked and sad / guilty, he comforts her, pretending it’s just that she’s tired. It’s a smokescreen for him: he appears to be comforting, when he knows he can keep the ruse up, and that she’ll now believe the ruse and won’t suspect him. And really what’s happening is that he’s dispelling her localized, specific confusion—her confidence that something weird just happened because it contradicts her memory, her concentration of epistemic force in time, her attention on the details of a context in which a trick is in fact being played on her and she’s noticed and is trying to form a coherent hypothesis—he dispels that by giving her an explanation which tacitly still assumes that in fact what happened was that she was forgetful.
“Don’t worry.” More telling her what to feel. “It’s not valuable.” Knowing that she wasn’t worried that he was worried about the monetary value; then when she apologizes more because it’s his family hierloom, he doesn’t contradict her. That way the positive transcript—what he actually said out loud—reads like he’s being forgiving and saying that she doesn’t owe him, the negative transcript shows that he’s letting her insist that she’s at fault, harmed him. Reminds me of a dinner guest insisting on helping clear the table and the host super-insisting it’s fine; the guest is sometimes in a sense insincere. He sets it up so that it’s she, not he, who brings the true harm of losing an heirloom into the conversation; subtly this reinforces that she’s worse than he’s letting on, and it’s only his generosity that’s keeping them together, despite what she would know if only she checks to see that she’s bad.
“It hurts me when you’re ill and fanciful.” After confronting her, challenging her to assert—while he’s staring her down, after being cross with her and denying he’s cross with her—that she is actually perceiving that the maid despises her. “I hope you’re not starting to imagine things again.” “You’re not, are you Paula?” Either she’s starting to imagine things again, or the maid despises her; the former is a catastrophized version of the obvious other hypothesis, that she’s imagining / mistaken about just this particular thing. By catastrophizing, he removes reasonable options—either deny her husband’s narrative based on an uncertain perception, or else admit to being teetering on the edge of losing her mental continence.
“But my dear, I thought you were only being polite, why didn’t you tell me you really wanted to see her?” Right after he just yelled at her to get her to say no. He silences her, and pretends that he’s left communication channels perfectly well open if only she would just use them in the obvious way.
He lets her infer that she forgot he’s taking her out, lets her stew in that for like 20 seconds, talks about something else, then tells her it was indeed a surprise.
Here’s some notes I took about the first some minutes of Gaslight (1944) (SPOILER alert. It’s a very good movie, and somewhat relevant).
When he grabs the letter out of her hands he’s like “Oh uh I was just worried about all the unhappy memories it’s reminding you of”. It’s weird, it’s a double move: on the one hand, most obviously it’s a lie to cover up that he’s worried about something else, but also it reveals that he’s positioning himself as hyperconcerned about her. He doesn’t excuse it by some selfish motive like “I became super curious about the letter” or “Your talking is annoying me” or whatever. Further, his supposed concern is about her “unhappy memories”, positioning himself as an agent who takes it as a salient variable to track, what’s going on with her memories and emotions; and implicitly, that he’s an agent in the position to affect and manage her relationship with her memories and emotions.
And in the next breath, he explicitly tells her to forget all that unhappy stuff. He says “While you are afraid of anything, there cannot be any happiness for us”; “You must forget her”. This sounds sort of innocent, especially in the context of concern, but it’s ambiguous between a mere description/prediction of what will make them happy, vs. a threat of e.g. leaving or withholding happiness from her if she doesn’t follow his orders. It’s also just an obviously extreme (and implausible) statement when considered explicitly / from a third-person perspective, but in a way that could slip by as merely being high-intensity because the situation is high-intensity, rather than itself being a crazy statement.
Her only response is to say “Well, not [to forget] her, but what happened to her”. Which, now that I think of it, makes the extremeness look intentional: by making an extreme statement and command, her corrective reasoning doesn’t correct far enough. She’ll remember her aunt, but has still tacitly agreed to forget what happened to her aunt; and this constitutes a step towards buying in to him being appropriate to give her orders about what to do with her mind.
He gives her his mother’s pin as a gift, but then immediately takes it back. “You are inclined to lose things Paula.” “I didn’t realize that.” “Oh just little things.” It’s a subtle dashing of hope; supposedly she’s special enough for him to give her his heirloom, and he loves her and wants to symbolize her specialness, but then he “realizes” that she’s unreliable; it’s her fault, so *in opposition* to the motions of his naive love for her he has to maturely handle her. He’s staying in the frame of concern that he’ll keep the pin for safekepping so she doesn’t lose it. He probes with a strong claim, and then when she notes her surprise, he “clarifies”, which is in effect a subtle retreat, to a weaker and more difficult to verify claim (“just little things”); it’s just on the edge where it’s reasonable to trust someone’s report, since maybe they noticed something you didn’t, and it’s hard to falsify. He’s using her feedback about when she notices that his claims are implausible, to calibrate where and how far he can go in each case.
“There, now you’ll remember where it is.” “Oh don’t be silly, of course I’ll remember.” “Oh I was teasing you my dear.” More probing and walking-back. He reasserts his proposition about her forgetfulness, by implication (“now you’ll remember [and you wouldn’t otherwise]”); and then he pretend to not have actually been doing so; and he also implicitly asserts that she can’t tell when he’s teasing her.
“You’ve been forgetting things. Don’t worry, you’ve been tired.” “Yes that’s it, I’ve been tired.” He gives her an explanation that she can be sure will be accepted by the shared narrative; thus defusing the tension of the falsification of her experience without her having to directly contradict his false report; and thus walking her further into committing to agreeing that she’s unreliable.
He took the broach, causing her to believe she’d harmed him, then when she accepts that she’s been forgetful and is spooked and sad / guilty, he comforts her, pretending it’s just that she’s tired. It’s a smokescreen for him: he appears to be comforting, when he knows he can keep the ruse up, and that she’ll now believe the ruse and won’t suspect him. And really what’s happening is that he’s dispelling her localized, specific confusion—her confidence that something weird just happened because it contradicts her memory, her concentration of epistemic force in time, her attention on the details of a context in which a trick is in fact being played on her and she’s noticed and is trying to form a coherent hypothesis—he dispels that by giving her an explanation which tacitly still assumes that in fact what happened was that she was forgetful.
“Don’t worry.” More telling her what to feel. “It’s not valuable.” Knowing that she wasn’t worried that he was worried about the monetary value; then when she apologizes more because it’s his family hierloom, he doesn’t contradict her. That way the positive transcript—what he actually said out loud—reads like he’s being forgiving and saying that she doesn’t owe him, the negative transcript shows that he’s letting her insist that she’s at fault, harmed him. Reminds me of a dinner guest insisting on helping clear the table and the host super-insisting it’s fine; the guest is sometimes in a sense insincere. He sets it up so that it’s she, not he, who brings the true harm of losing an heirloom into the conversation; subtly this reinforces that she’s worse than he’s letting on, and it’s only his generosity that’s keeping them together, despite what she would know if only she checks to see that she’s bad.
“It hurts me when you’re ill and fanciful.” After confronting her, challenging her to assert—while he’s staring her down, after being cross with her and denying he’s cross with her—that she is actually perceiving that the maid despises her. “I hope you’re not starting to imagine things again.” “You’re not, are you Paula?” Either she’s starting to imagine things again, or the maid despises her; the former is a catastrophized version of the obvious other hypothesis, that she’s imagining / mistaken about just this particular thing. By catastrophizing, he removes reasonable options—either deny her husband’s narrative based on an uncertain perception, or else admit to being teetering on the edge of losing her mental continence.
“But my dear, I thought you were only being polite, why didn’t you tell me you really wanted to see her?” Right after he just yelled at her to get her to say no. He silences her, and pretends that he’s left communication channels perfectly well open if only she would just use them in the obvious way.
He lets her infer that she forgot he’s taking her out, lets her stew in that for like 20 seconds, talks about something else, then tells her it was indeed a surprise.
Et cetera.
(Damn, that dude really likes jewels.)
This helps make it click a lot more strongly for me why this is such a big deal in spiritual communities.
Also really salient where the abuser is being ‘supportive’ of negative things the target already thinks about themselves.