Medical gaslighting: conceptual and theoretical foundations, 2026, Noble

[Jonathan Edwards]

Gaslighting is clear in the general vernacular, it’s a cultural touchstone, a meme.
We don’t need to say something is “67” but we do.

@Eleanor gave a very succinct account of how it isn't clear at all. In fact it is a misuse. Who needs memes or cultural touchstones, whatever they may be. We need clear language. I have never heard the term '67' other than as a number.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

They gaslight you into accepting a framework of your symptoms that will make you do what they want. It isn't necessarily what they believe.

I call that something like bullshitting, which I think most people do understand - saying stuff that you don't yourself believe in order to shut someone else up. Since it bears no relation to the original metaphor of gaslighting that term just seems like an empty political mantra to me.

 

[V.R.T.]

Since it bears no relation to the original metaphor of gaslighting that term just seems like an empty political mantra to me.

But it does - they put effort into convincing you of it. It took my GP six months to dismantle my certainty that my symptoms were not mental health related.

Even if gaslighting is not the exact right term, it is a form of manipulation that does unspeakable damage to pwME, even leaving deterioation aside. Bullshitting is not even close to encapsulating the phenomenon.

 

[V.R.T.]

I have never heard the term '67' other than as a number.

Saying or writing 67 is a meaningless meme that children and teenagers find hilarious at the minute for some reason. Or maybe it's already passe I'm not sure.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I agree with every word of that. But I've never been gaslit for ME/CFS. I've only been gaslit for chronic pain, hEDS, and MCAS.

OK but I have no idea what you mean by gaslighting there. The word therefore seems useless. If we want a useful debate involving patients and healthcare workers then we need terms that are generally understood.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Moreover, the gaslighting I'm most familiar with comes from my sick cohorts' descriptions, not ivory towers or neo-Freudians (per se).

Nor there.

What is 'gray literature'?

 

[hallmarkOvME]

Has anyone read this?
Medical Gaslighting: How to Get the Care You Deserve in a System that Makes You Fight for Your Life​

It's great. (I'm not the author; I don't know her)

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Because that doesn't encapsulate the experience of having your doctor use underhanded and manipulative language and techniques in order to trick you into accepting a bogus psychobehavioural framework of your illness,

No, but it was just intended as an example of what gaslighting might mean if I had any idea.
If it means what you said then that's fine but why not just say what you said? Judging from hallmarkOvME's posts this is not what they mean by gaslighting - as indicated above.

I don't think anyone actually knows what this term means to anybody else..

 

[Utsikt]

I agree as long was we stipulate that is the patient who ultimately decides when impact is negative.

It isn’t that clearcut. The patients can decide that they perceive the impact to be negative, and that they therefore don’t want to go do it, but they don’t have a monopoly on deciding and a doctor shouldn’t give up attempting to persuade them if a reasonable neutral assessment is that impact would be positive.

This isn’t controversial. We have laws mandating seat belts in cars because we think it’s good for the individual, and we fine those who don’t adhere. That’s going much further because non-adherence to what’s deemed to be beneficial is punished, and that isn’t supposed to happen in a medical context.

The stipulation also ignores the impact on others. If someone has cancer that is detected early and refuses treatment until it’s stage 3, they might need hundreds of thousands more worth of treatment as a result. That is a net negative impact on everyone else. How do you account for that?

I agree as long we stipulate that (1) the patient agrees and understands the social contract had been entered and what it constitutes,

That’s an unreasonable stipulation, because the contract has been entered into by society on a societal level through the laws that govern medical practice and that have been decided on through democratic processes.

and (2) the patient's knowledge, experience and decision, supersede any interpretation of what the "medical" perspective in interpreted to be.

See my first point.

Yes. The doctor has a right to protest, and would of course be malfeasant to recommend drinking anything known to be harmful.

So you agree with my first point?

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

But it does - they put effort into convincing you of it.

But that is not the core of the original behaviour - which Eleanor describes very well. Persuasion is called persuasion. The sort of gaslighting you, but not some others think occurs from doctors has nothing to do with the behaviour in the film.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Bullshitting is not even close to encapsulating the phenomenon.

Fine, call it manipulation if it is manipulation.

 

[hallmarkOvME]

Nor there.

What is 'gray literature'?

I'm looking for the definition in the book I just cited for what I mean. "Gray literature," I got from the title of the publication the OP is a the topic of. There it's contrasted to "the formal" literature. OP? A little help here?

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Has anyone read this?
Medical Gaslighting: How to Get the Care You Deserve in a System that Makes You Fight for Your Life

The first sentence of the blub says:
For women, the possibility of experiencing medical gaslighting—having a health care provider dismiss or ignore their concerns without considering appropriate testing or creating a treatment plan—has always been a very real and present danger,

Which seems to be another quite different meaning of gaslighting.


More than anything else my impression is that the use of the term gaslighting mostly serves to give a simplistic gloss on what is a hugely complex situation with healthcare professionals with all sorts of different viewpoints beahving in a wide range of ways, including the doctrinaire BPSite, the 'anything for an easy life' GP, the biomedical academic who somehow manages to believe in pseudoscientific diagnoses alongside BPS concepts (and vice versa) and those who even get into triple think.

Turning things into books or overlong articles in humanities journals giving political diatribes does not seem to me terribly useful.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I'm looking for the definition in the book I just cited for what I mean. "Gray literature," I got from the title of the publication the OP is a the topic of. There it's contrasted to "the formal" literature. OP? A little help here?

Seems to be stuff not published in formal journals or institutional documents.

 

[hallmarkOvME]

Fine, call it manipulation if it is manipulation.

Tautologies don't advance knowledge or improve practices. The citation and content of from it of theOP's topic confines us to the conceptual and theoretical "stage," or working definitions. Persuasion per se is not gaslighting. I WANT my doctors to try to persuade, but if the trying to manipulate me in process, they're gaslighting.

DEFINITION from the Jacqueline book I linked above.

The act of healthcare provider dismissing or ignoring a patient's concerns or complaints and leaving them without a clear treatment plan or diagnosis, often stating that the patient has an unspecified mental illness, or is exhibiting an unnecessary amount of caution.

I would add that it often includes ableism and is philosophically founded, at least implicitly on, paternalism.

 

[hallmarkOvME]

For women, the possibility of experiencing medical gaslighting—having a health care provider dismiss or ignore their concerns without considering appropriate testing or creating a treatment plan—has always been a very real and present danger,

Which seems to be another quite different meaning of gaslighting.

I'm pretty sure the woman who wrote the book would say they are of a piece.

 

[MrMagoo]

@Eleanor gave a very succinct account of how it isn't clear at all. In fact it is a misuse. Who needs memes or cultural touchstones, whatever they may be. We need clear language. I have never heard the term '67' other than as a number.

Exactly.