Narrative gaslighting

ABSTRACT

Self-narration, many philosophers assume, makes important contributions to our mental lives. Two views on self-narration can be distinguished. On the internalistic view, self-narration unfolds in the secluded mind and does not require overt communication. On the situated view, self-narration often depends on the conversational interaction with an interlocutor. The situated view has many advantages over its internalistic rival, including theoretical consistency and empirical plausibility. Yet, research on situated conversational self-narration has been shaped by a harmony bias, which consists in the tacit assumption that interlocutors contribute to self-narration in ways that are beneficial and supportive, rather than malicious and harmful. This paper seeks to mitigate the harmony bias by considering the phenomenon of gaslighting, which is characterized by an interlocutor’s erosion of someone’s sense of epistemic and moral competence. In cases of narrative gaslighting, this erosion proceeds by maliciously interfering with the self-narrator’s mnemonic, interpretational, and conceptual abilities. Bringing together research on situated self-narration and gaslighting for the first time, it will be argued that the emerging account of narrative gaslighting has important implications for both.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-narration
• gaslighting
• situated cognition
• harmony bias
• co-authoring

1. Introduction

Talk about self-narration abounds in recent philosophy of mind. It has been argued that the products of self-narration constitute the self (Heersmink, 2018, 2020; Schechtman, 1996, 2007), shape the self (Hutto, 2016), or contribute to a sense of self (Chadha, 2019; Dings & Newen, 2023; Goldie, 2012). Others remain skeptical of the descriptive and normative implications of the claim that self-narration plays, or ought to play, a substantial role in our mental lives (Latham & Pinder, 2023; Strawson, 2004). For both advocates and skeptics of self-narration, one of the challenges lies in capturing the phenomenon, or range of phenomena, to which the notion of “self-narration” is supposed to apply. Two broad views can be distinguished: the internalistic view and the situated view.

According to the internalistic view, self-narration is a process that unfolds in the secluded mind and does not require any form of overt expression or communication. For example, Marya Schechtman’s (1996) narrative self-constitution theory rests on the assumption that self-narration is primarily an implicit process that is guided by unspecified “implicit organizing principles” of the mind (p. 116). As another example, consider Peter Goldie’s (2012) account of self-narrative thinking, which originates in the idea that “[n]arrative thinking involves not text or discourse, but another kind of representation: thoughts” (p. 3). Schechtman (1996) and Goldie (2012) do not deny that the products of self-narration might be articulated or publicly communicated, but these forms of externalization are optional downstream aspects of self-narration. Both versions of the internalistic view have received various criticisms on conceptual, descriptive, and normative grounds (for overviews, see Fabry, 2023b; Strawson, 2010). In light of these criticisms, a new way of thinking about self-narration has emerged.

According to the situated view, self-narration is a process that is realized by the embodied interaction of an agent with the local environment (e.g., Gallagher, 2020; Hutto, 2016; Menary, 2008). Despite significant differences in scope and theoretical commitments, these situated accounts converge on the assumption that self-narration is first and foremost a socio-cultural and interactive process. For current purposes, I will focus on a situated account of conversational self-narration that I developed in earlier work (Fabry, 2023a). According to this account, one important form of self-narration is realized by the co-present, embodied, and interactive conversational exchange between a self-narrator and one or more interlocutors. Interlocutors thus make significant contributions, to varying degrees, to the act of self-narration and to the form and content of the self-narrative product. Note that this account is not committed to the view that self-referential narratives constitute the self (Heersmink, 2020) or shape the self (Hutto, 2016). Furthermore, it is not committed to, but compatible with, pattern theories of self (Gallagher, 2013; Newen, 2018) and the view, drawing on Buddhist philosophy, that self-referential narratives contribute to an episodic sense of self (Chadha, 2019; for details, see; Fabry, 2023a). Finding strong support in empirical and narratological research (e.g., Fivush, 2019; Fludernik, 1996; Norrick, 2019; Pasupathi & Billitteri, 2015), the situated account of conversational self-narration is committed to a practice-based epistemic strategy. Specifically, it seeks to describe the social and interactive sense-making practices in which agents engage in their everyday lives, rather than making claims about the ontological structure, if any, of (the) self or the phenomenological structure of a sense of self. In other words, even skeptics of narrative self accounts, such as Galen Strawson (2004, 2010) or Sally Latham and Mark Pinder (2023), should be willing to accept the empirical claim that the vast majority of agents engage in conversational self-narrative practices on an everyday basis, and that this empirical claim is sufficient to motivate philosophical interest in the phenomenon. Against this background, this article will elaborate the narratologically informed and empirically supported situated account of conversational self-narration.

Once it is accepted that self-narration is a situated phenomenon, it becomes possible to identify an important research gap in the relevant literature. If interlocutors make non-trivial contributions to self-narration, then self-narrators will be, in Doug McConnell’s (2016) words, subject to “context-dependent vulnerability to co-authoring” (p. 30). By engaging in processes of self-narration, McConnell (2016) argues, agents make themselves vulnerable to becoming targets of malicious interference. In other words, the very idea of conversational self-narration implicates scenarios in which interlocutors do not support and collaborate with self-narrators, but aim to undermine their sense of epistemic and moral competence. Call this the problem of malicious interference. This problem has remained hidden from internalists. Furthermore, it has been ignored by proponents of the situated view, who have focused on cases in which self-narrators benefit from the contributions of their interlocutors. The reason for this gap is, I submit, that existing research on conversational self-narration has been shaped by a harmony bias that has, until recently, pervaded research on situated cognition and affectivity as a matter of contingent fact (Bruineberg & Fabry, 2022). This bias consists in emphasizing the beneficial effects while neglecting the (potentially) harmful consequences of an agent’s interaction with the socio-culturally shaped environment (Aagaard, 2021). Recently, however, philosophers have begun to explore cases in which social or material features of the environment wrongfully harm agents, for example by contributing to structural oppression. This new research cluster has uncovered some of the ways in which things (Liao & Huebner, 2021), technologies (Spurrett, 2024; Timms & Spurrett, 2023), corporations (Slaby, 2016), medical and healthcare systems (Coninx, 2023), and educational systems (de Carvalho & Krueger, 2023) can negatively interfere with agents’ sense of competence or wellbeing. The present paper can be understood as a contribution to this emerging research cluster by starting to mitigate the harmony bias in the context of conversational self-narration.

Specifically, I will argue that the problem of malicious interference needs to be considered in order to arrive at a descriptively adequate and empirically plausible account that is able to capture the wide range of cases of conversational self-narration. In doing so, I am mitigating the harmony bias that has permeated recent research on situated self-narration. The purpose of this paper, then, consists in identifying, characterizing, and discussing the problem of malicious interference in the context of situated conversational self-narration for the first time. To this end, I will focus on gaslighting as an important manifestation of malicious interference.

To a first approximation, gaslighting can be defined as a temporally extended process of eroding and ultimately destroying a person’s standing as an epistemically and morally competent agent by engaging in certain conversational practices (Abramson, 2014). Gaslighting is characterized by the perpetrator’s attempt to undermine the target’s interpretative and evaluative accounts of their own experiences. It frequently occurs, I will argue, in the context of conversational self-narration, such that the perpetrator interferes with the target’s attempt to narrativize selected components of their own personal past. I will identify three distinct, yet often co-occurring forms of narrative gaslighting. In particular, I will propose that narrative gaslighting aims at undermining the target’s self-ascribed competence to autobiographically remember their own personal past (mnemonic interference), to narrativize autobiographically remembered episodes (interpretational interference), or to conceptualize personal past experiences (conceptual interference). Overall, then, I will argue that the very idea of situated conversational self-narration induces the heretofore overlooked problem of malicious interference. Gaslighting, which frequently occurs in the context of conversational self-narration, can be considered as a prevalent manifestation of malicious interference, which threatens to undermine the target’s sense of epistemic and moral competence.

I will proceed as follows. I will first present an account of situated conversational self-narration (Section 2). I will then introduce gaslighting and review and discuss existing philosophical and sociological research on this phenomenon (Section 3). Integrating research on situated conversational self-narration and gaslighting, I will develop an account of narrative gaslighting (Section 4). This account, I will argue, has implications for research on situated conversational self-narration and gaslighting (Section 5).

2. Situated conversational self-narration

The situated view holds that self-narration can be characterized as a temporally structured connection of events in one’s personal past that depends on the self-narrator’s embodied interaction with their local, socio-culturally shaped environment (e.g., Menary, 2008). The self-narrator refers to themself as the protagonist of the narrative product by establishing an epistemically or emotionally motivated connection between autobiographically remembered events. Autobiographical remembering, as I shall use the term, brings about the actualization of episodes in one’s own personal past, which are often contextualized by the rehearsal and application of relevant semantic knowledge (see Heersmink, 2020). For current purposes, I am not committed to any particular account of autobiographical remembering (for overviews, see, e.g., Michaelian & Sutton, 2017; Saint’anna et al., 2023). However, I shall assume that the episodic component of autobiographical remembering is generative and constructive. It can be influenced, in part, by the situational context of autobiographical recall, self-narrational or otherwise (Hirst & Echterhoff, 2012). While processes of self-narration stand in a dependence relation with autobiographical remembering, they are also shaped by the narrative patterns and norms that dominate in a given socio-cultural community (McLean et al., 2023).

Self-narration can unfold in various forms and media. In this paper, I focus on a particular kind of self-narration that occurs in everyday conversation. This self-narrational kind is characterized by its communicative structure that emerges from the conversational interaction of the self-narrator and at least one interlocutor (Fabry, 2023a; Fludernik, 1996, 2014; Norrick, 2007). The self-narrator assumes epistemic authority over their way of temporally ordering, causally, reason-based, or emotionally connecting, and contextualizing autobiographically remembered events (Fabry, 2023b). Yet, the self-narrational process is actively influenced by the linguistic and paralinguistic contributions of the interlocutor (Pasupathi & Billitteri, 2015). Linguistic contributions can take various forms, from asking questions, requesting or contributing elaborations, making exclamations, to expressing agreement or disagreement with what is said. Paralinguistically, interlocutors influence the unfolding of the self-narrational process through their posture, gestures, facial expressions, or gaze (Norrick, 2007), which may encourage or discourage, support or undermine the self-narrator’s attempt to establish a narrative account of their personal past experiences.

This situated account of conversational self-narration is supported by empirical evidence in developmental psychology. This evidence shows that self-narration is a ubiquitous component of conversational exchanges in intimate relationships (Fivush, 2019; Jennings et al., 2014; Nelson & Fivush, 2020; Pasupathi & Hoyt, 2009; Weeks & Pasupathi, 2010). Furthermore, psychological research indicates that the kind and quality of the social relationship between the self-narrator and the interlocutor influences the characteristics of the self-narrational process (Pasupathi et al., 2022). An implication of this account of conversational self-narration is that the interlocutor’s linguistic and paralinguistic expressions influence the unfolding of the self-narrational process to varying degrees (Fabry, 2023a). This influence ranges from signs of encouragement or discouragement to the enrichment or correction of autobiographical details, narrative connections, or conceptual categorizations (Norrick, 2019). In sum, then, in cases of situated conversational self-narration, interlocutors are never passive recipients of independently created self-narrative products. Instead, they actively shape and influence the self-narrational process.

Until now, research on situated conversational self-narration has focused on cases in which the interlocutor is collaborative and cooperative and seeks to provide linguistically and paralinguistically expressed support for the self-narrator. As a consequence, cases of an interlocutor’s malicious conversational contributions have been neglected. This neglect is an example of a harmony bias that has pervaded, until recently, research on situated cognition and affectivity. Recall from the Introduction that the harmony bias consists in a focus on the investigation of the beneficial effects of agent-environment interactions while neglecting the examination of their (potentially) harmful consequences (Aagaard, 2021). To start developing a more nuanced account of the benefits and perils of situated conversational self-narration, I take Doug McConnell’s (2016) work on self-narrational co-authoring into consideration. Self-narratives, McConnell (2016) assumes, are usually co-authored: interlocutors contribute, to varying degrees, to processes of self-narration. For this reason, self-narrators are subject to context-dependent vulnerability. That is, they are vulnerable to malicious interference in a certain socio-culturally shaped context that enables the manifestation of the very process of self-narration. In this paper, I argue that gaslighting is a kind of case in which an interlocutor harmfully exploits the self-narrator’s context-dependent vulnerability. In what follows, I will first review and discuss existing work on gaslighting (Section 3). In a second step, I will develop an account of gaslighting in conversational self-narrational contexts (Section 4).

3. Gaslighting

In recent years, philosophical research has made substantial progress in understanding the phenomenon of gaslighting (Abramson, 2014; Kirk-Giannini, 2023; Manne, 2021, 2023; McKinnon, 2017; Podosky, 2021; Spear, 2020, 2023; Stark, 2019). In this section, I will not attempt to systematize or even integrate the various, at times incongruent views on gaslighting that have emerged from this research. Rather, I will review and discuss only those aspects that are of particular relevance for considering cases of malicious interference in the context of conversational self-narration. In doing so, I will largely follow Kate Abramson’s (2014) considerations. To a first approximation, the notion of “gaslighting” refers to “[…] a form of emotional manipulation in which the gaslighter tries (consciously or not) to induce in someone a sense that her reactions, perceptions, memories and/or beliefs are not just mistaken, but utterly without grounds – paradigmatically, so unfounded as to qualify as crazy” (Abramson, 2014, p. 2). This manipulation usually occurs in close personal relationships, where the perpetrator and the target are spouses, romantic partners, friends, family members, or colleagues. It usually unfolds across an extended period of time, such that the perpetrator continuously dismisses the target’s account of their experiences and their evaluative and interpretative attitudes toward themself and their interactions with the environment (Abramson, 2014). The aim of gaslighting consists in fully disintegrating the target’s sense of epistemic and moral competence by maliciously interfering with their “independent standing as deliberator and moral agent” (Abramson, 2014, p. 8). Ultimately, as Abramson (2014) claims, gaslighting aims “[…] to destroy the possibility of disagreement by so radically undermining another person that she has nowhere left to stand from which to disagree, no standpoint from which her words might constitute genuine disagreement” (p. 10). For Abramson (2014), the destruction of the target’s possibility to communicate disagreement is an intentional act.¹ The reason is that the perpetrator purposefully and deliberately seeks to undermine the epistemic and moral competence of the target.

Before proceeding, I would like to consider some of the social and cultural background conditions of gaslighting. By frequency, not by necessity, gaslighting is a gendered phenomenon (Sweet, 2019). As Abramson (2014) points out, non-male persons are more often the target than male persons. In many cases, gaslighting contributes to the perpetuation of patterns and norms that characterize sexism (Abramson, 2014) and misogyny (Manne, 2021; Stark, 2019). As sociological research indicates (Sweet, 2019), sexist and misogynist patterns and norms that are bound up with gaslighting behavior often intersect with practices that contribute to the ongoing manifestation of racism, xenophobia, socio-economic inequality, or ableism. This assumption is largely consistent with Abramson’s (2014) view that efficient gaslighting behavior unfolds “against the background of power inequities” (p. 19). Specifically, Abramson distinguishes between structural, relational, and situational power inequities. The relevant power inequities can be structural, for example being constituted and reinforced by forms of structural oppression.² They can be relational, for example by finding their expression in the target’s long-term emotional dispositions or configurations that force them to continue their relationship with the perpetrator. Or they can be situational, for example in cases of a transient one-sided emotional dependence of the target on the perpetrator in moments of crisis and experiential disruption. The assumption that gaslighting behavior unfolds, by frequency, not by necessity, against the background of power inequities emphasizes its moral wrong: “[…] to not only manipulate someone, but to do so in a way aimed at radically undermining her independent standing, by using manipulative leverage one has in virtue of a power inequity is a special brand of immorality indeed” (Abramson, 2014, p. 19; italics in original).

In sum, then, gaslighting behavior frequently unfolds in a larger context of power inequities, which can, but need not include manifestations of structural oppression. It is characterized by the perpetrator’s emotional manipulation of the target such that their sense of epistemic and moral competence gets ultimately destroyed. Through ongoing conversational manipulation, the perpetrator aims at undermining the target’s willingness, confidence, or ability to challenge them on epistemic and moral grounds.

4. Narrative gaslighting

As we have seen, gaslighting is a phenomenon that consists in destabilizing and undermining someone’s standing as an epistemically and morally competent agent in a sequence of conversational exchanges. This phenomenon, I will argue in this section, frequently occurs in the context of conversational self-narration. To the extent that conversational self-narration depends on contributions of an interlocutor, self-narrators are vulnerable to malicious interference (see Section 2). Gaslighting is a case of malicious interference, as defined above, because it aims to undermine the target’s sense of epistemic and moral competence, or in Abramson’s (2014) words, their “independent standing as deliberator and moral agent” (p. 8). Gaslighting thus exploits, in malicious ways, the self-narrator’s context-dependent vulnerability as it has been characterized by McConnell (2016).

Building on this characterization, R. Maxwell Racine (2023) proposes that the malicious exploitation of vulnerability to co-authoring is frequently connected to recognition deficiencies (Medina, 2018), which result from and are perpetuated by structural oppression in Young’s (1990) sense.³ On Racine’s (2023) view, members of structurally oppressed groups are frequently misrecognized in the context of self-narration. Accordingly, “[…] it is much more likely that certain groups’ self-narratives are doubted, dismissed, rejected, or ignored by co-authors” (Racine, 2023, p. 6). To the extent that gaslighting commonly is a gendered phenomenon that frequently, but not necessarily occurs in the context of structural oppression, it fits the description of narrational recognition deficiencies that Racine (2023) develops.

While Racine (2023) identifies a connection between conversational self-narration, malicious interference, and gaslighting, it is beyond the scope of their considerations to systematically develop an account of gaslighting in the context of conversational self-narration. This section serves the purpose to develop such an account. Given the complexity and variability of conversational self-narration, gaslighting can take many forms. In what follows, I will identify and describe three particularly important forms of narrative gaslighting: mnemonic interference, interpretational interference, and conceptual interference. While these forms are distinct and can be considered independently from each other for analytical purposes, I assume that they often co-occur and mutually enforce each other.

First, in cases of mnemonic interference, the perpetrator questions the accuracy and appropriateness of autobiographical memories that the target represents in their self-narrative about a particular sequence of events. In other words, the perpetrator interferes with the target’s sense of mnemonic competence by challenging their ability to recall, with a certain level of accuracy, episodic or semantic aspects of their own personal past. Furthermore, the perpetrator interferes with the target’s sense of meta-cognitive competence by trying to make them doubt their ability to assess the accuracy and appropriateness of narratively represented autobiographical memories. Mnemonic interference can occur in cases in which the target represents a sequence of events that the perpetrator did not share or witness. Or it can occur in cases of shared past events, where the perpetrator claims to recall the events of concern differently – on their view, more accurately and appropriately.⁴ There are several conversational linguistic and paralinguistic strategies for engaging in mnemonic interference. Linguistically, the perpetrator might contribute to self-narrational conversations by asking rhetorical questions such as “Are you really sure this happened?” and “Are you sure you remember this correctly?” or uttering exclamations such as “That’s not what happened!”, “That’s just not true” and “You are making this up!” Additionally, they might contribute to self-narrational conversations by paralinguistic means such as gestures (e.g., shaking their head), facial expressions (e.g., frowning), or eye movements (e.g., eye-rolling) that signal rejection or disapproval of what is said.

Second, in cases of interpretational interference, the perpetrator seeks to undermine the target’s competence to interpret the temporal unfolding, connectedness, and significance of events in their personal past reasonably and reliably. In contrast to mnemonic interference, which seeks to call the remembered and narrativized content into doubt, interpretational interference targets the act of self-narration per se. In other words, while mnemonic interference targets the what of self-narration, interpretational interference targets the how of self-narration. The target is depicted as an unreliable, untrustworthy self-narrator who lacks the competence to apply key self-narrational principles. As mentioned above in Section 2, these principles include the temporal orderedness, connectedness, and contextualization of autobiographically remembered personal past events. By calling the application of these self-narrational principles into doubt, the perpetrator wrongfully denies that the target is competent in capturing the relevance, significance, and meaningfulness, epistemically and morally, of events in their own personal past in narrative form.

In other words, unlike mnemonic interference, which denies the accuracy and appropriateness of autobiographical memories, interpretational interference denies that the autobiographically remembered events that the target seeks to narrativize are properly temporally ordered, meaningfully connected by causes, reasons, or emotional resonance, and contextualized within a wider socio-cultural situation. This means that mnemonic and interpretational interference can become doubly dissociated. At least in theory, a perpetrator can question the accuracy of autobiographically remembered events without maliciously challenging the target’s ability to give them a temporal order, to connect them meaningfully, or to capture narratively the wider situational context. Vice versa, a perpetrator can accept that the target remembers certain autobiographical events accurately and appropriately, but maliciously denying that the target is capable of narrativizing them in a way that respects key self-narrational principles.

Like in cases of mnemonic interference, the perpetrator can employ several conversational strategies to perform interpretational interference. Linguistically, they can raise rhetorical questions such as “You know that doesn’t make any sense, right?” or make exclamations such as “You have no idea what was going on!”, often in combination with slurs or personal insults. Paralinguistically, the dismissal of the target’s epistemic and moral competence can be communicated through various context-dependent gestures, facial expressions, or eye movements that communicate disapproval and rejection.

While mnemonic and interpretational interference can be conceptually and descriptively distinguished, and can become dissociated at least in theory, they often co-occur and mutually support each other in practice. To see this, consider a case reported in Sweet’s (2019) sociological study. Sweet (2019) presents and discusses the case of Susan, a 32-year-old black woman of low socio-economic status who had experienced domestic violence over an extended period of time. Susan “[…] described her ex’s gaslighting tactics in terms of ‘flipping the script,’ meaning he would transform stories and events to make it seem like she was the aggressor” (pp. 862–863). This suggests that Susan’s perpetrator engages in both mnemonic and interpretational interference. These gaslighting practices of Susan’s perpetrator augmented her distress when she tried to seek help from the police:

Susan described an incident when she called the police after her boyfriend assaulted her: “The police talked to me. Then [my boyfriend said to me], ‘You know I wasn’t doing that, you know that. Did you hear me? Are you blanking out? What’s wrong?’ [speaks in a fake concerned voice] He’d make eye motions with me, like, are you going crazy?” (interview 10.22.15). As Susan tried to tell the police what happened, her abuser interceded to make it seem as if she were making up the story, as if she were having delusions and was too unstable to understand what had happened. […] Susan’s abuser manipulated event narratives, accused her of being a “crazy bitch,” and mobilized police mistrust of her to unravel her social context. (Sweet, 2019, p. 866)

In this case, the perpetrator contributes to conversational self-narration in malicious ways and seeks to undermine both the mnemonic and the interpretational competence of Susan in the presence of a police officer. He engages in mnemonic interference by undermining her ability to accurately recall events from her recent personal past (“You know I wasn’t doing that, you know that.”). Furthermore, he engages in interpretational interference by declaring that she lacks interpretational competence, depicting her as “too unstable to understand what had happened” and by maliciously intervening with “manipulated event narratives.” Additionally, he not only undermines her epistemic competence, but also her moral competence, her standing as a virtuous person who is entitled to be treated respectfully by calling her a “crazy bitch.” Overall, Susan’s perpetrator manipulated her self-narrative account of abuse and assault to the point that she not only lost confidence in her own epistemic and moral competence, but also the trust of the public authorities that should have helped and supported her.

As we have seen, narrative gaslighters often proceed by engaging in (a combination of) mnemonic and interpretational interference. However, I would like to suggest a third form of narrative gaslighting: conceptual interference in the context of conversational self-narration. As Podosky (2021) has argued, amongst others, many cases of gaslighting concern the extension of concepts. They identify two kinds of conceptual gaslighting. In cases of first-order gaslighting, the perpetrator questions the target’s application of a certain concept to capture a sequence of events. In cases of second-order gaslighting, the perpetrator questions the target’s general ability to understand and apply a certain concept, thereby seeking to undermine their conceptual competence in a particular domain or range of domains.⁵ As a result, “[t]he subject of gaslighting doubts her ability to get facts right, and properly evaluate situations, in virtue of doubting the accuracy of the concept used to interpret some aspect of the world” (Podosky, 2021, p. 217). Conceptual interference is distinct from mnemonic interference, because it does not question the target’s self-ascribed competence to accurately recall episodes and facts from their personal past. It is distinct from interpretational interference, as it does not call into doubt the target’s ability to sequence, connect, and contextualize autobiographically remembered events. Rather, in cases of conceptual interference, the perpetrator seeks to undermine the target’s competence to conceptually label a certain sequence of events (first-order gaslighting) or to understand and apply a certain concept at all, for example ‘sexual harassment’ or ‘sexual assault’ (second-order gaslighting).

To clearly see the difference between conceptual and interpretational interference, it is useful to consider again the theoretical possibility of double dissociation. A perpetrator can maliciously undermine the target’s interpretational competence in temporally ordering, causally, reason-based, or emotionally connecting, and contextualizing autobiographically remembered personal past events without calling their first- or second-order conceptual competence into question. For the application of self-narrational principles, which is deemed incompetent by the perpetrator, does not necessarily rely on the target’s employment of relevant concepts for labeling certain kinds of behavior in concrete cases (first-order) or in general (second-order). Vice versa, a perpetrator can concede that the target is competent in applying key self-narrational principles while maliciously denying their first- or second-order conceptual competence.

In sum, I have argued in this section that gaslighting frequently occurs in the context of situated conversational self-narration. I have considered three distinct, yet often co-occurring and mutually supportive forms of narrative gaslighting: mnemonic interference, interpretational interference, and conceptual interference.⁶ Narrative gaslighting, I have noted, can be realized through different configurations of these distinct forms. This leads to two additional assumptions that are needed to fully understand the dynamics and force of narrative gaslighting. First, narrative gaslighting is a gradual phenomenon, ranging from weak to moderate to strong cases of malicious interference with the self-narrator’s sense of epistemic and moral competence. Second, like all kinds of gaslighting, narrative gaslighting is a temporally extended phenomenon that unfolds dynamically across time. Narrative gaslighting threatens to undermine most forcefully the target’s sense of epistemic and moral competence if it occurs, in different configurations, across an extended period of time, until the target is no longer confident that they have the competence and authority to remember, interpret, and conceptualize their own personal past in conversational self-narrative form.

5. Concluding remarks and implications

Gaslighting, I have argued, is a phenomenon that frequently occurs in the context of conversational self-narration. On the account of narrative gaslighting that I have developed, the perpetrator intentionally exploits the self-narrator’s context-dependent vulnerability to co-authoring (McConnell, 2016), thereby frequently, but not necessarily reinforcing prevalent recognition deficiencies (Racine, 2023). By engaging in a delicate combination of mnemonic, interpretational, and conceptual interference, the perpetrator aims at undermining the target’s sense of epistemic and moral competence. This account has implications for research on situated self-narration and gaslighting.

As outlined in the Introduction, the proposed account of narrative gaslighting can be seen as a contribution to an emerging cluster in research on situated cognition and affectivity, which attempts to mitigate the harmony bias (Aagaard, 2021) by exploring how environmental features (including other agents) negatively interfere with agents’ sense of competence or wellbeing (Coninx, 2023; de Carvalho & Krueger, 2023; Liao & Huebner, 2021; Slaby, 2016; Spurrett, 2024; Timms & Spurrett, 2023). For the first time, the account on offer seeks to mitigate the harmony bias in research on situated self-narration. At this stage, progress in this field depends on the development of nuanced accounts of the influences of other agents on processes of conversational self-narration. This requires that we turn our attention to interlocutors’ harmfully wrongful and malicious contributions to self-narration. Narrative gaslighting, I have argued, is a particular kind of malicious interference with processes of self-narration, which can be understood, by frequency, not necessity, as the manifestation and perpetuation of recognition deficiencies (Racine, 2023). Other kinds of malicious interference should be considered by future research on situated self-narration, for example victim blaming (e.g., Manne, 2019) and silencing (e.g., Dotson, 2011; Fivush, 2010). Accordingly, I see narrative gaslighting as a member of a collection of different, yet potentially overlapping kinds of malicious interference with self-narration, rather than as an isolated pattern of conversational behavior.

At the same time, narrative gaslighting is an interesting and important phenomenon in its own right. Looking at the examples, case studies, and vignettes that philosophers have employed to capture the phenomenon (e.g., Abramson, 2014; Kirk-Giannini, 2023; Manne, 2021; McKinnon, 2017; Spear, 2023), it appears to be obvious that gaslighting frequently occurs in the larger context of socio-culturally situated conversational exchanges that often have narrational properties. However, to date, philosophical research has not explicitly developed the idea that gaslighting often occurs in the context of practices of conversational self-narration. The account of narrative gaslighting that I have offered in this paper can contribute to ongoing research on gaslighting in at least two ways. First, it can help specify the socio-culturally shaped situational contexts in which gaslighting behavior frequently occurs. We have seen that gaslighting requires a temporally extended process of conversational exchange that focusses on the target’s representation, interpretation, and evaluation of events that matter to them. Situated practices of self-narration lend themselves to this mode of conversational engagement, thereby providing suitable conditions for the manifestation of gaslighting behavior. Second, my account can help us better understand why gaslighting is such a powerful means of eroding and ultimately destroying somebody’s sense of epistemic and moral competence. The main purpose of conversational self-narration is to share and make sense of relevant aspects of one’s own past experiences by developing a temporally ordered, causally, reason-based, or emotionally connected, and contextualized configuration of autobiographically remembered events. Developing such a configuration presupposes, and ideally reinforces, a robust sense of epistemic and moral competence. By interfering with the target’s self-narrational endeavor to recall, interpret, and conceptualize episodes in their personal past, the perpetrator can erode the very possibility of acting and communicating as an epistemically and morally competent agent.

In sum, bringing together research on situated self-narration, co-authoring, and gaslighting, I have argued that at least some cases of gaslighting occur in the context of conversational self-narration. By engaging in a combination of mnemonic, interpretative, and conceptual interference, the perpetrator seeks to erode the target’s sense of epistemic and moral competence. The resulting account of narrative gaslighting, I have proposed, can make important contributions to research on situated self-narration and gaslighting.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Markus Pantsar for his constructive feedback on an earlier version of this article. I would also like to thank the audiences of the Agora Speaker Series at the University of Wollongong (May 2023), the seminar of the School of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Sydney (October 2023), the interdisciplinary workshop on “Thinking Together” at Murdoch University, Perth (October 2023), and the conference on “Cognition, Culture, Narrative” at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture at the University of Giessen (December 2023) for helpful comments on this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award [DE210100115]

Notes

1. Note that there is substantial disagreement in the research literature about the intendedness or non-intendedness of gaslighting. For example, consider Veronica Ivy’s (2017) account, according to which gaslighting often proceeds unintentionally as a form of testimonial injustice, which can be defined, following Miranda Fricker, as a speaker’s reception of a “credibility deficit owing to identity prejudice in the hearer” (Fricker, 2007, p. 28). This stands in conflict with Abramson’s (2014) view, according to which “[…] gaslighting puts questions of credibility deficits and excesses off the table entirely” (p. 17; for a critical discussion, see Spear, 2023). In response, Paul Podosky (2021) offers a disjunctive account of conversational gaslighting, according to which gaslighting can be intentional or unintentional (for criticism, see Kirk-Giannini, 2023). For current purposes, I will not engage further in this debate and follow, for the ease of exposition, Abramson’s (2014) assumption that gaslighting proceeds intentionally.

2. While Abramson (2014) does not use the notion of structural oppression, I assume that her characterization of what she calls “structural power inequities” would be largely consistent with Young’s (1990) account of structural oppression, for example. Young (1990) assumes that “oppression” is a structural and multi-faceted notion that captures “[…] the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions, media and cultural stereotypes, and structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms […]” (p. 41).

3. Medina (2018) distinguishes between two kinds of recognition deficiency. First, the notion of a quantitative recognition deficit refers to cases in which a communicating agent or a communicated topic does not receive the deserved amount of recognition. Second, the notion of misrecognition applies to cases in which a communicating agent or a communicated topic is not appropriately recognized. These forms of epistemic recognition deficiencies, Medina (2018) points out, often intersect, but can and should be distinguished for analytical purposes.

4. In cases of narrativizing shared past events, mnemonic interference can be clearly distinguished from corrections or strategy disagreements in collaborative remembering (see, e.g., Harris et al., 2019; Sutton et al., 2010). In contrast to corrections or strategy disagreements in these empirically studied cases, mnemonic interference is a form of intentional emotional manipulation that aims to undermine the target’s mnemonic and meta-cognitive competence.

5. Note that my endorsement of Podosky’s (2021) distinction between first-order and second-order gaslighting, as it can be applied to cases of conceptual interference in the context of narrative gaslighting, does not commit me to their disjunctive account of gaslighting (see footnote 1 above). Furthermore, it should be mentioned that first-order and second-order gaslighting is different from first-order and second-order conceptual disagreement on Podosky’s (2021) view. The main reason is that cases of gaslighting are not characterized by “a rational dispute between epistemic peers” about the correct conceptualization of a sequence of events (p. 213).

6. I am very grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pressing me to clarify the differences between mnemonic, interpretational, and conceptual interference.