HIDDEN CURRICULUM OF OBEDIENCE: GASLIGHTING AS PEDAGOGY IN PHD PROGRAMME

Abstract

This article examines how gaslighting functions as an element of the hidden curriculum in doctoral education, producing a pedagogy that shapes compliance, self-doubt, and silence. Drawing on scholarship about the hidden curriculum, workplace gaslighting, academic bullying, and Foucauldian/Bourdieusian theories of discipline and subjectification, the current author argues that gaslighting is not merely an interpersonal pathology but can be institutionalized as a method of training doctoral candidates into particular forms of docility and academic habitus. The paper documents common manifestations of supervisory and institutional gaslighting (delegitimisation of students’ perceptions, manipulation of evaluative standards, micro-invalidations of competence), traces the mechanisms that reproduce obedience (power asymmetries, reward structures, normative evaluation), and describes the short and long-term consequences for doctoral identity, mental health and research integrity. Finally, the article proposes structural and pedagogical remedies - transparent procedures, collective advising, curriculum that makes the hidden explicit, training for supervisors, and restorative practices - that aim to transform doctoral pedagogy from training in obedience to cultivating critical scholarly agency.