Decoding Mindf*ckery: Dr. Robin Stern on The Gaslight Effect

A Little Bit Culty

Sarah Edmondson & Anthony “Nippy” Ames

True Crime, Society & Culture, Education

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s episode is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Dr. Robin Stern is not your average psycho-therapist – she’s renowned for her work in emotional intelligence, relationships, and well being. And she’s the psychological sleuth who’s highlighted one particularly culty behavior: gaslighting. Fun fact: Dr. Stern actually coined the phrase “the gaslight effect.”

As we know, gaslighting is straight out of the culty charismatic coercive fuckwad playbook. But we want to get specific and don’t mean to merely call names. So in this episode, we go full CSI on gaslighting with Dr. Stern. We dissect the term with the expert who wrote several books on the subject: The Gaslight Effect and The Gaslight Effect Recovery Guide.

NOTES -

Dr. Robin Stern is co-founder and associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and is a licensed psychoanalyst who’s been in private practice for over 30 years. She hosts the Gaslight Effect podcast. She’s developed and co-created social emotional learning apps including HowWeFeel and OjiLifeLab. She writes and is interviewed regularly for her insight into socio-emotional matters for Psychology Today, The Hill, Time Inc., and Harvard Business Review.

You can find her on Twitter and Facebook.

If you’re looking for more, here’s an early ALBC episode specifically about narcissism and gaslighting: Shameless: Dan Shaw on Gaslighting, Narcissists, & Recovering from Cultic Abuse

Also…

Let it be known far and wide, loud and clear that…

The views and opinions expressed on A Little Bit Culty do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast. Any content provided by our guests, bloggers, sponsors or authors are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any religion, group, club, organization, business individual, anyone or anything. Nobody’s mad at you, just don’t be a culty fuckwad.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, medical, or mental health advice. The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the podcast and are not intended to malign any religion group club organization business
0:13.8	individual anyone or anything.
0:17.0	I'm Sarah Edmondson and I'm Anthony air quotes nippy Ames and this is a little bit
0:30.5	guilty a podcast about what happens when things that seem like a great thing at first go bad.
0:35.6	Every week we chat with survivors, experts, and whistleblowers for real cult stories told directly by the people who live through them.
0:42.6	Because we want you to learn a few things we've had to learn the hard way.
0:46.1	Like if you think you're too smart to get sucked into something culty,
0:49.7	you're already prime recruitment material.
0:52.2	You might even already be in a cold.
0:54.0	Oops, you better keep listening to find out.
0:56.6	Welcome to season depths of the ocean
1:05.0	hanging on to win my love.
1:09.0	If I let go of it all I could leave, but I know. Hello everybody and welcome back to this week's
1:17.0	and welcome back to this week's episode of a little bit culty.
1:21.0	Today's guest is Dr Robin Stern. She's not your average
1:23.8	psychotherapist. You know what? We'll just call it. She's a baller.
1:27.8	She's renowned for her work in emotional intelligence, relationships, and
1:31.0	well-being. And she's a psychological sloth who has helped the world
1:34.3	come to a greater understanding of one particularly culty behavior that too many of us
1:39.4	deal with in our daily lives gas And fun fact, she actually coined the phrase, the gas light effect.
1:46.9	And yes, of course, we know that gaslight has its roots in that Ingrid Bergman movie of the same
1:52.1	name about the guy who tries to drive his lady crazy,
	...

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