Sociopathy Part 7: Gaslighting

See earlier posts in this series:

Sociopathy: What is a Sociopath?

Sociopathy Part 2: The Traits of a Sociopath

Sociopathy Part 3: The Creation of “Its”

Sociopathy Part 4: The Importance of Authority and Obedience

Sociopathy Part 5: The Covetous Sociopath

Sociopathy Part 6: The Tools of the Trade

 

Dr. Stout explains the phenomenon of gaslighting and how this is used by the sociopath. She begins with a description of where the term originates.

In 1944, George Cukor directed a psychological thriller entitled Gaslight, in which a beautiful young woman, played by Ingrid Bergman, is made to feel she is going insane. Her fear that she is losing her mind is inflicted on her systematically by Charles Boyer, who plays her evil but charming new husband. Among a number of other dirty tricks, Boyer arranges for Bergman to hear sounds in the attic when he is absent, and for the gaslight to dim by itself, in a menacing house where her aunt was mysteriously murdered years before. Of course, no one believes Bergman about the noises in the attic or the gaslight or much of anything else, and her gradual descent into doubting her own reality has found its way into English idiom as “to be gaslighted.”

Boyer is not violent. He never strikes Bergman. Much more sinister — he causes her to lose faith in her own perceptions.

 

She references a case study in her book of a sociopathic psychologist, Doreen Littlefield and another psychologist who worked with her in the same hospital named Jackie Rubenstein. Littlefield is an evil monster who pretends to be a paragon of virtue and a leading and much respected figure at the hospital.

To suspect, and to try to explain to others that one has been targeted by a sociopath, is to be gaslighted. Jackie Rubenstein was a good example of this phenomenon when she confronted Doreen Littlefield with the cruelty she had done to Dennis.  Afterward, Jackie phoned a friend for support because she felt she was losing her mind. And when she tried to relate her discovery about Doreen to the unit director, he politely but clearly echoed Doreen’s implication that Jackie had gone a little crazy along with her paranoid patient.

 

Dr. Stout explains why it is so hard to call out a sociopath, especially one who has cloaked themselves in authority:

When Jackie accused Doreen of a vicious act toward an unoffending patient, the natural question was, “Why would a person like that do such a horrible thing?” This is the question others always ask overtly or by intimation, and it is such a bewildering, unanswerable question that the one who suspects the sociopath usually ends up asking it, too, only to find that she has no rational-sounding explanation. And like the innocent new bride in Gaslight, she may come to lose faith, partially or completely, in her own perceptions. Certainly she will hesitate to tell her story again, since trying to expose the sociopath casts doubts on her own credibility and maybe even on her sanity, These doubts, our own and other people’s, are painful, and readily convince us to keep our mouths shut.

Anyone who has ever been in the close orbit of David Miscavige will understand this phenomenon only too well. He (and Hubbard before him) are NEVER wrong and NEVER at fault. They are perfect, and to even suggest there may be something awry with them is signing your own death warrant. And you certainly begin to doubt your own sanity “Isn’t this absolutely insane what is going on? Why doesn’t anyone say anything about it? Am I the one who is crazy because everyone else seems to think it’s just fine?”

 

What happens when a sociopath is finally exposed?

Over the years, listen­ing to hundreds of patients who have been targeted by sociopaths, I have learned that within an organization or a community, in the event that a sociopath is finally revealed to all and sundry, it is not unusual to find that several people suspected all along, each one independently, each one in silence. Each one felt gaslighted, and so each one kept her crazy sounding secret to herself.

 

The questions that have no answers. Why would anyone do something like that?

Why would a person like that do such a horrible thing? we ask ourselves. By “a person like that,” we mean a normal-looking person, a person who looks just like us. We mean a person in a professional role, or an animal lover, or a parent or a spouse, or maybe a charming someone we have had dinner, or more, with. And by “such a hor­rible thing,” we mean a negative act that is inexplicably bizarre, because there is no way, based on our own feelings and normal motivations, that we can explain why anyone would ever want to do it in the first place. Why would a smart, handsome, privileged boy like Skip want to slaughter small animals? In adulthood, why would fabulously successful Skip, married to the beautiful daughter of a billionaire, risk his reputation by breaking the arm of an employee? Why would Dr. Littlefield, a psychologist and the nicest person in the world, suddenly mount a brutal psychological attack on a recovering patient, and a VIP at that? Why would she, an established professional person, knowing she would be found out, make up a meaningless whole-cloth lie just to scare a young intern?

These are the kinds of questions we ask ourselves when we are exposed to sociopathic behavior, and in most cases, we cannot come up with answers, that sound plausible to us. Speculate as we may, we cannot imagine why. Nothing sounds believable, so we think there must be a misunderstanding or maybe  we have greatly exaggerated something in our observations. We think this way because the conscience-bound mind is qualitatively different from the conscience-free mind, and what sociopaths want, what motivates them, is completely outside our experience. 

 

The sense of obligation rooted in attachments to other people does not exist in the universe of the sociopath. It makes them virtually impossible to understand for a normal person.

Good people question themselves constantly, reflexively, and subject their decisions and actions to the exacting scrutiny of an intervening sense of obligation rooted in their attachments to other people. The self-questioning of conscience seldom admits absolute certainty into the mind, and even when it does, certainty feels treacherous to us, as if it may trick us into punishing someone unjustly, or performing some other unconscionable act.