When he searches her handbag, he mysteriously finds it there. On the rare occasion when they do go to a gathering at a friend’s house, he shows her his watch chain, from which his watch was missing. He implies that he is doing this for her own good, because her “kleptomania and imaginings” are due to her nervous disposition. He stops all visitors, and he does not allow her to leave the house. Having isolated her from those within the house, he then precedes to take command of all outside influences so that he has complete coercive control over her. Of course, he pretends to have genuine concern for Paula, but the bottom-line is that he is only concerned about isolating her. He then takes command of all outside influences so that he has complete control over Paula, making it easier to manipulate her sense of reality. Convinced that the wife is insane, Nancy begins to treat her with contempt, and Paula can feel her loathing, which further distresses her. He states that in Europe no woman would feel humiliated for such a trivial act. When Paula complains of feeling hurt and humiliated by his behaviour with Nancy, he tells her he is only being friendly. For example, he fires his wife’s trusted elderly maid, replacing her with a younger one (Nancy) that he can seductively control. He does not stop there he resorts to other means of deception to further confuse his wife. When Paula mentions hearing footsteps coming from the attic, and seeing the lights dimming for no apparent reason, he tells her it’s all in her imagination, and that he does not see any change in the brightness of the lights. Secretly, Gregory gains entry into the attic and begins to tamper with the gas-light there, causing the rest of the lamps in the house to become dim. Almost immediately he sets out, systematically and methodically, to deliberately drive Paula insane by psychologically manipulating their environment covertly for example, when a picture is missing from the wall, Gregory tells her that she took it, but Paula cannot recall having done so. Once Alice’s things are removed into the attic, Gregory’s diabolical psychopathic behaviour becomes very bizarre indeed. Gregory reacts violently to the letter, but recovers his composure quickly, and justifies his outburst as vexation at seeing his lovely bride relive bad memories. The letter was dated two days before the murder. When they arrive, hidden in a book, Paula finds a letter addressed to her aunt Alice, it was from a man called Sergius Bauer. He persuades her that they should return to London to live in the house bequeathed to her by her aunt. While in Italy, she meets a charismatic older man named Gregory Anton (played by Charles Boyer), they have a whirl-wind romance and very soon she marries him. To help her get over the trauma of Alice’s death, Paula is sent to live in Italy, where she studies opera with her aunty Alice’s old teacher for several years. The perpetrator was after the star’s jewels, but before he could get them, he was interrupted by her young niece Paula (played by Ingrid Bergman) a child that Alice had reared after the death of her own mother. The film starts with the murder of the famous opera singer Alice Alquist in London. The term “Gaslighting” comes from the 1944 Hollywood classic movie called Gaslight. Where does the term “Gaslighting” come from? In effect the gaslighting turns the victim’s reality on its head. The victim becomes depressed and withdrawn, they become totally dependent on the abuser for their sense of reality. They begin to find themselves second-guessing themselves, and this makes them become very insecure around their decision making, even around the smallest of choices. Unable to trust their own judgments, they start to question the reality of everything in their life. When they are exposed to it for long enough, they begin to lose their sense of their own self. The emotional damage of Gaslighting is huge on the narcissistic victim. That is why it is such a dangerous form of abuse. Because of its subtly, this cunning Machiavellian behaviour is a deeply insidious set of manipulations that is difficult for anybody to work out, and with time it finally undermines the mental stability of the victim. Gaslighting involves the abuser to frequently and systematically withhold factual information from the victim, and replacing it with false information. The intention is to, in a systematic way, target the victim’s mental equilibrium, self-confidence, and self-esteem so that they are no longer able to function in an independent way.
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