[Ads-l] 1961 psychology use Re: [ADS-L] [Non-DoD Source] Re: "Gaslight" as a verb only five decades old

Ben Zimmer bgzimmer at GMAIL.COM
Fri Jan 13 18:21:45 UTC 2017


Thanks to Stephen and Garson for these. Stephen's cite is identical to the
earliest given by the OED, but there it is dated as 1969 and credited
to Stanley C. Plog, the editor of the book _Changing Perspectives in Mental
Illness_, which apparently anthologized Anthony F.C. Wallace's earlier
work.

I confirmed that Garson's cite does indeed appear in the Aug. 1962 issue of
Scientific American, on p. 71.

On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 1:07 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <
adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:

> The match appears to be in a 1962 issue. I cannot see the full text
>
> Schizophrenia
> Don D. Jackson
> Scientific American 207, 65-74 (August 1962)
> doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0862-65
>
> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 12:53 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole
> <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Following Stephen's lead. Here is a match that apparently appeared in
> > Scientific American
> > and explicitly mentioned the verb form:
> >
> > Frontiers of Psychological Research: Readings from Scientific American
> > https://books.google.com/books?id=CqcoAQAAIAAJ
> > Stanley Coopersmith - 1964
> >
> > [Begin excerpt]
> > ... of the parent-child relation. Such disturbed patterns of
> > communication may obtain in other relations; the motion picture
> > Gaslight, in which a husband willfully subjects his wife to such
> > treatment, has added the verb "to gaslight" to the language.
> > [End excerpt]
> >
> > Garson
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 12:38 PM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu>
> wrote:
> >> It is also popularly believed to be possible to "gaslight" a perfectly
> healthy person into psychosis by interpreting his own behavior to him as
> symptomatic of serious mental illness.While "gaslighting" itself may be a
> mythical crime, there is no question that any social attitude which
> interprets a given behavior or experience as symptomatic of a generalized
> incompetence is a powerful creator of shame[....]
> >>
> >>
> >> P. 183 in Culture and Personality by Anthony F. C. Wallace (NY: Random
> House, 1961, First Printing, confirmed on paper).
> >>
> >>
> >>
>

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