Teachers: victims of ‘gaslight’

“Gaslighting someone”, would be “trying to make someone self-doubious of his own reason or judgment as an effect of discrediting his perceptions and memories

License Creative Commons

Josep Oton

The situation in education is obviously far from being good. Nevertheless, the Administration and educationals authorities keep reaffirming its postulates without any trace of assuming its own responsabilities and blaming teachers to be guilty for the poor results, alleging their supposed lack of training, preparation and motivation. This discourse has permeated public opinión, and many teachers are suffering a kind of harassment that specialists have called ‘gaslighting’.

The meaning of the term gaslighting, which could be literally translated as “gaslighting someone”, would be “trying to make someone self-doubious of his own reason or judgment as an effect of discrediting his perceptions and memories”. In other words, gaslighting someone consists of manipulating him psychologically so that he ends up questioning his own ability to manage his mental balance.

The term comes from the film Gaslight, directed in 1944 by George Cukor. It is based on a play by Patrick Hamilton released with the same title. In Spain, however, the film was presented as Luz que agoniza. The protagonists are a just married couple, Paula and Gregory, played by Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer.

The young couple move into a house in Victorian England, inherited from a recently deceased aunt. Then strange things come to happend: the lights of the gas lamps change their intensity without any explanation. However, this irrelevant event affects Paula and causes her a lot of anxiety because her husband makes her believe that the light keeps shinning all the time the same. She’s the only one that perceives the variations and doubts on what she sees.

In addition, she feels terrified when she hears strange noises at night coming from the attic. Once more, she seems to be the only one to hear it. Likewise, paintings and jewels disappear from the house, and her husband makes her believe that it was she who took them, although she no longer remembers. It doesn’t help that both Gregory and the maids tell her that everything she experiences is a figment of her imagination and insist that her mother had died in a mental hospital affected by a similar disorder.

Actually, the flickering of light, the noises, the disappearances and the whispers were not Paula’s imagination. She was the victim of acts orchestrated by her husband to drive her crazy and take her fortune.

The term gaslighting has been derived from this film to describe a destabilizing technique that generates domination. It is a form of mobbing, an emotional abuse exercised by individuals with a narcissistic personality. They feed their self-esteem and supremacy by causing insecurity and confusion in the victim, deliberately putting them on the edge until they doubt their ability and mental balance.

When the victim complains and says: “what you said to me hurt me”, the abuser distorts reality and responds: “I never said that, you’re making it up” and thus plants the seed of doubt.

And when the victim complains: “I felt so bad when you did that,” the abuser, displaying his lack of empathy, cynically responds: “you are too sensitive, I was just joking” to try to convince the victim of his emotional weakness and his erroneous perception of the facts.

The victim may also react and defend himself vehemently, but then receives the response: “you are exaggerating,” “you are drowning in a glass of water,” “your reaction is disproportionate,” “you are too aggressive,” so that, instead of continuing on the path of confrontation and self-affirmation, he may end up doubting his judgment and giving in.

This phenomenon, which is characteristic of interpersonal relationships, can be transferred to institutional relationships, specifically to the world of education. In other words, are teachers not being blamed in order to appear responsables for poor academic results? Are they not blamed for being poorly trained, for not working hard enough, and for having too many holidays? Isn’t it a form of degradation to claim they are no longer transmitters of knowledge?

Meanwhile, don’t the Administrations and the gurus of innovation sin of messianic narcissism and self-condescension by continually asserting themselves without recognizing the slightest bit of error? Isn’t it an exercise in despotism to constantly discredit the teaching staff by making them believe that the reality of the classroom is not as they perceive it? By suggesting that they have no criteria to diagnose what is happening? That it is a joke when it is a lack of respect or, even worse, an aggression? By distorting the facts by stating that the results are good when they are terrible? That they are responsible for what happens to the students? That they are exaggerated with their demands?

We will not spoil the film, but we must set that these situations change by illuminating them, by providing objectivity, by confronting them with common sense. In the meantime, since reality does not match the delusions of some prophets, thousands of professionals are denigrated by making them believe that their perception of education is not real, that everything that happens is their fault, that they are emotionally fragile and that makes them unable to “manage the classroom”, that they do not work hard enough – that is, they are lazy – and they do not understand the benefits of the new educational paradigms.

This is, quite simply, abuse. Abusers, not victims, should undergo psychological treatment.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons