Coercive Control, Gaslighting, and Recovery

Abusive partners use insidious means of manipulation to control their victims.

Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

Key points

• Coercive control is now considered a crime that involves serious harm to intimate partners and family members.
• Coercive controllers can be described as intimate partner terrorists.
• Gaslighting can be an intrinsic aspect of coercive control, leading victims to believe they're crazy.

Coercive control was written into U.K. law as a crime in 2015, referring to a form of abuse that occurs within a family or intimate partnerships. Coercive control is an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation, intimidation, or other abuse designed to harm, punish, or frighten their victim. The controller’s aim is total domination over their partner, restricting their freedom of movement, finances, social activities, clothing, sex life, and occupation. This kind of tyrannical behaviour is sometimes called intimate partner terrorism, as it pervades all aspects of life, creating an atmosphere of paralysis and fear for the partner, and other members of the household. Like other forms of terrorism, the coercive controller does not need to inflict physical violence to ensure their needs are met; the threat of violence can be enough.

For over 30 years I have worked with coercive controllers and their victims, exposed to the many ways that this abuse manifests, and the terrible consequences. The occasional use of violence, sometimes directed against partners, at other times against children or even family pets, scars the bodies and minds of the victims. Ironically, many of these controllers have themselves been victims of abuse in childhood, and learned that treating others with violence, fear, and intimidation is the surest way of maintaining control. As adults, fearing rejection, abandonment, and humiliation, they project these feelings onto others, asserting their role as the one in charge, whom no one would dare to leave.

I have worked with numerous women who were the children, and later victims, of abusive relationships but who said that the violence and coercive control initially felt like markers of care to them. While they did not want this abuse, nor consciously chose it, at some level it felt ‘normal’, showing they mattered and that their partners needed them. Only after years of abuse and tyranny at the hands of their partners could they eventually see the coercive control for what it was, not the proof of love that they had initially assumed it to be. For other women, the pattern is different, in that the woman becomes the coercive controller, as I describe in the case of Paula in my book, If Love Could Kill. However, in the year ending December 2022 in England and Wales, in over 97% of cases of conviction for coercive control, the perpetrator was male; research indicates that the majority of victims are women.

Gaslighting is often an element of coercive control. Here the abuser persuades their victims that their perception of reality is wrong and their beliefs and experiences are the products of a deranged mind. This is a powerful and destructive form of abuse and involves denying the reality of another’s experience, undermining their perceptions of the world, and insisting that they are insane, delusional, stupid, or wrong. The victim starts to doubt herself, and her capacity to assert themselves is further eroded. When already in a state of confusion, fear, and helplessness, it is easy to lose confidence in the world and in oneself. If a victim tries to confront her abuser, pointing out the ways in which his behaviour is wrong, or his version of reality faulty, the accusation will be twisted around, and thrown back onto them, as they are told that they are making it up, crazy, jealous, paranoid and suspicious.

The term 'gaslight’ refers to the 1938 play and later film in which a controlling partner twists his new wife’s mind into painful knots as she tries to make sense of strange occurrences, including gaslights flickering without cause. As she becomes increasingly isolated, because of her husband’s coercive control of her, and his involvement of a housekeeper to support his manipulations and tricks, she comes close to losing her own mind. This dramatic but gradual erosion of confidence continues, until, with support, she feels able to confront her husband and reclaim a sense of herself and trust in her own perceptions. Sadly, outside of fiction, this is not always possible, as victims of gaslighting and coercive control can become increasingly helpless and come to believe wholly in the perceptions of their abusers, accepting and internalising these denigrations and distortions as accurate reflections.

The process through which ‘gaslighting’ works can be understood through the psychoanalytic concept of ‘projective identification’ in which a controller disowns unacceptable parts of themselves, seeing them instead in another person, and insisting on this disavowal and denial of, for example, weakness, fearfulness, inability, wrongdoing. The other part of projection is ‘identification’ or ‘projective identification’ where the person targeted with these unwanted attributes starts to believe in them, and doubt themselves, seeing themselves through the eyes of the controller. This is a destructive self-fulfilling prophecy, seen in victims of abusive relationships, where their gaslighting partners have made them believe that they are the problem, they are ‘paranoid’ or crazy, and it is their fault for getting things wrong. Examples include the controller’s reappraisal of their partner’s friends or family, who will be denigrated and then alienated, along the lines of ‘you think they are good friends who care, but they don’t, they are selfish sluts who use you’ or ‘your mother is destroying our relationship, and only comes here to try and get you on her side.’ ‘She is jealous of our love and wants to split us up’ (also an example of projection—it is the abuser who is jealous of the mother and wants to destroy her relationship with his partner.) Victims can become so isolated and manipulated that they accept these distortions; fearing the consequences of challenging the controller’s propaganda and regime they become increasingly helpless and dependent on the abuser.

To break free of gaslighting and recover faith in their own minds, victims need support and validation. This often needs to come from outside influences, who can restore a link to reality and restore confidence in their own perceptions. In some cases, this process takes many years as coercive controllers do everything to keep their victims away from anyone or anything that could break their spell, offer a glimpse of freedom, or vindication of their sanity. Gaslighting and coercive control can be lifelong and devastating. We urgently need to increase awareness of the power of psychological, as well as physical abuse, and the insidious nature of gaslighting, providing avenues for escape and recovery.

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