Have you ever felt that your actions are always incorrect or checked if there was anything wrong with your behavior? Recently, this concept has dominated people’s minds and even caused severe mental stress.

What do you feel when you see this? Is it just a fight? Is it a form of discipline? The first picture says that the child's thoughts and experiences are wrong, just as the mother introduces them. Let’s see the second picture. The lover is undermining their partner’s value and passing the blame on to them. What we can see in both cases is that mothers and lovers are psychologically manipulating someone to strengthen their control over others. In modern society, we refer to the concept of making others doubt themselves through mental control as ‘gaslighting’. The term ‘gaslighting’ first coined after the 1944 movie ‘Gaslight,' which told the story of a husband who slowly emotionally manipulated his wife.

The JBNU Globe interviewed a student, who we will refer to as ‘Y,’ who experienced gaslighting. Y said she was gaslighted by her friend. A friend suddenly asked Y to send her money that she didn't pay back last time. However, Y said she had never borrowed money. Eventually, when she ultimately refused to give money to her friend, the friend begrudgingly told Y that she would pay for Y’s meal only this time. From that moment, Y began to doubt herself. She wasn’t sure whether or not she had actually borrowed money and forgot to pay her friend back. 
As such, gaslighting is seen as a form of emotional violence that is more common than you may think.

We think that gaslighting, which is often explained as ‘brainwashing’ or ‘manipulation’ in various press media, does not happen to us. If you really think about it, nobody knows when and where it will happen. There are some common features that the gaslightee, who is the victim of the gaslighter, have. 

Did you reflect on your behavior while you were self-diagnosing? How many of these characteristics do you have? If you reflect on your life, then you are in the gaslightee’s position at that very moment. Come to think of it, most people have experienced the situations listed in the self-diagnosis.

Gaslighting happens through two steps. These two steps often occur simultaneously rather than sequentially. First, breaking down psychological barriers is to throw repeated chaos at the other person to question his or her own judgment. For example, if someone makes you doubt your judgment repeatedly, such as "Think about it, you're definitely wrong .” Even though it's not your fault, you gradually break down your psychological barriers, doubt your judgment, and increasingly trust the gaslighter, which makes it easier to brainwash yourself. The key to the second step is to manipulate and use a person whose judgment has been blinded, who has become more psychologically inferior to himself, as he manipulates the person according to his/ her needs. The final goal varies from person to person, such as gaslighting the other with the intention of covering up one's mistakes, using the other person as an emotional wastebasket, or using the other person for sex.

You couldn’t always break off relations with someone who gaslights you. This is because we can gaslight the other person unconsciously. But you must be careful of anyone who intentionally gaslights another person with a specific, deliberate, malicious intent to take advantage of someone else. Also, the wounds from gaslighting are never light. We need to be aware of gaslighting behavior and know how to protect ourselves. Gaslighting is the theft of an individual's character. This is because the person who gaslights leads and controls an individual to fill his or her own needs and desires.

By So Woobin(Reporter), Han Hee-jeong(Reporter)