How Reality Gets Rewritten Gaslighting is psychological manipulation causing the target to question their perception, memory, and sanity. The term derives from the 1944 film Gaslight, where a husband manipulates his wife into believing she is insane by denying observable reality and insisting her perceptions are wrong. As a manipulation tactic, gaslighting involves persistent denial of facts, minimization of the target’s experiences, contradiction of the target’s memory, and projection of manipulation onto the target. The effect is an erosion of the target’s confidence in their own judgment, making them dependent on the manipulator’s version of reality. Gaslighting operates through systematic...