Gaslighting: Why a 1944 Film Still Holds the Truth About One of the Most Insidious Forms of Abuse
Gaslighting is everywhere. In therapy sessions. On TikTok. In political debates. In messy breakups posted online. But most people using the word have never seen where it came from—or felt the raw weight of its original meaning.
The term didn’t come from a psychology manual. It came from a story. A 1944 film called Gaslight. In it, a husband methodically convinces his wife she’s losing her mind—moving objects, dimming the lights, and denying reality until she doubts everything she knows.
Watching the film is like stepping into the suffocation itself. You feel the erosion of confidence, the rewriting of truth, the calculated isolation. It’s not just a plot—it’s the anatomy of abuse.
Before we dilute gaslighting into a buzzword, we owe it to ourselves—and to survivors—to go back to where it began.
