‘Gaslighting’ is a term that has recently entered popular diction. While it is helpful for victims of manipulation in identifying and labelling the maltreatment met to them, ill-use of the term contributes to the belittling of abuse in society.

‘ before. The word became popular through social media and eventually found its way into memes and tiktok videos. What does it actually mean? A quick Google search tells us that ‘gaslighting’ is defined as ‘

manipulating (someone) by psychological means into doubting their own sanity

.’ It characterises toxic relationships with an imbalance of power and involvement of manipulation. The term is used by victims who realise that they have been manipulated into questioning their own sanity by someone close to them. While earlier its implications were more serious (such as driving someone insane by manipulation, in hopes of committing them to mental institutions), it is now used in vague sense as making someone question their own truth. The term is used a lot in the clinical sense but has not been considered a formal literary expression by the 

. It has more popular usage among self–help and amateur psychology circles.

The term ‘gaslighting’ comes from a 1938 play called ‘

. The play became popular and, in 1944, was turned into a movie titled ‘

‘, which made it into a single word. The story surrounds a man who hides his identity from his wife and eventually drives her insane, by manipulating their gas powered lights into flickering, and thus convincing her that she’s going crazy. The success of this movie made the title-word a popular term to describe abusive relationships involving manipulation, which make a person question their sanity. Since then, the word has seen some usage around the 1990s, mostly in political situations, but stayed out of mainstream conversations. It finally rose to popularity around the 

 was accused of gaslighting the population by negating obvious facts.

While the term is not a part of the clinical jargon, it has more serious implications than the internet may lead one to believe. Gaslighting is not easily recognisable since it has no specific, rigid ‘

‘. Usually, the perpetrator is someone who uses their charm to get away with manipulation. Sociopathic or narcissistic people may use gaslighting as one of their methods to turn situations to their advantage. Victims of gaslighting can suffer from 

There is a scale to gaslighting, from lying and exaggerating, to controlling and domination”.

 Gaslighting is done covertly, but it’s up to debate if the perpetrator is always doing it deliberately. This is where the lines start to blur as people accuse their partners, parents, or friends of gaslighting in arguments where the other person defend themselves.

Social media has made the term popular enough for people to start using it lightly. Contestants on reality TV shows have been accused of gaslighting. Anybody who is caught lying is said to be gaslighting. The usage of the term in political contexts, too, is a slippery slope, as politicians from opposing factions accuse their counterparts of gaslighting the public, when they’re just lying. It is used interchangeably with ‘being untruthful’ and may soon become a synonym for fabricating. 

“It serves us to remember that gaslighting is a specific form of structured abuse. It’s not a convenient umbrella term for all mendacious or unpleasant behaviour; it isn’t gaslighting every single time someone lies, or makes excuses.

” It is important to remember that all gaslighters may be liars, but not all liars are gaslighters. Usage of the word in daily conversations needs to be checked since everyday instances of disagreements don’t necessarily mean someone is questioning one’s reality. It may simply mean they have different beliefs. Gaslighting is a form of 

So, when does one know they’re being gaslit? Gaslighting is a form of long term abuse in close relationships. One or two instances may not be able to decide if a person is gaslighting someone. A victim of gaslighting may feel powerless or may feel the need to hold on to the abusive, manipulative relationship. Gaslighting may involve withholding details, negating information provided by the victim, verbally abusing the victim in covert ways (such as through jokes that diminish their confidence and self worth), trivialising the victim’s emotions and undermining them, weakening their thought processes to make them question their own sanity. The abuser convinces the victim that their ideas are wrong, and that the abuser’s ideas are more ‘

‘. Cognitive dissonance is induced in the victim where they begin to question their own thoughts and perceptions, eventually leading to them having low self esteem and increased dependence on the abuser. The perpetrator thus gains control over the victim and has more power in the relationship. The perpetrator may also use the illusory truth effect where something is repeated so often that the person starts to believe it’s the truth.

 them. It isn’t restricted to romantic relations and has been observed a lot in parent–child relationships. While social media has helped a lot of people understand instances of gaslighting in their own lives, overuse of the term has started to blur its meaning and implications.

The Term Gaslighting: Its Uses and Abuses

If you were to wake up in a new world with no knowledge but all your cognitive abilities, would that affect how you perceive the world and everything around you? Imagine you wake up in a world covered in fog. You don’t know anything, you don’t see anything. The fog engulfs all. There is no light, but it’s not dark either. A fog so thick, you cannot see anything around yourself. There is nothing around you. You walk around but nothing changes. It’s just an endless, infinite fog. It has no smell. It has no feeling. It doesn’t stop you, but there is nowhere to go. The fog is everything. Now imagine finding other people.

Imagine that these people have been living in the fog for generations. They have a culture; they have beliefs all surrounding the fog. They believe that their god lives in the fog. He can’t be seen or touched or felt. But once in a while, the fog will take his shape. You find the priest who came up with this religion. He claims to have seen the shape. You find his followers, and they are sure they have seen the shape also. You ask them what the shape is, they call you an unbeliever. They accuse you of blasphemy. You start questioning your knowledge and start following that religion. You see the positivity of everyone when they have something to believe in. But you cannot see the shape. You spend days working and honing your belief. Meditating, trying to reflect on yourself, trying to push out the cynicism and accept the one truth. Just before you collapse, you see the shape. Or maybe you don’t. But the fog swirls in just the particular way and there it was. Now you know.

You set out again, armed with the confidence of belief. You find another group of people. They see a different shape. You are confused. You ask them what their shape is like, they call you an unbeliever and accuse you of blasphemy. They threaten you and you ask for forgiveness. You meet the priest who claims to have seen the shape. You meet the followers who are sure to have seen the shape. You tell them about the other people. They get angry and attack the other people, to educate them. There is resistance and bloodshed. None of the shapes shows up.

You set off again. This time you find another group of people who believe the fog is a curse. They believe the fog is a test of their belief. Next to them are the people who believe the fog is a blessing from their lord, to nurture and nourish them. They do not get along. Further off are the people who vehemently deny any shape in the fog. The fog is just the fog. There is no god. You move on.

You walk for a long time, to get away from all the conflict, you wish for peace, all of these people had promised you peace. Eventually, you find a fence. You go under the fence and at once people come and capture you. They ask where you are from. They ask which way the fog swirls in your land. You don’t understand the question. You know there might be shapes in the fog, but what is this about the direction of the fog. They decide you are a spy and should be killed; you ask for forgiveness and assure them you are from nowhere. You start living inside the fence. The fog swirls clockwise here. They have a benevolent king who is just and kind. Only he does not like it when people sneeze in his presence, so sneezing is against the law. People have accepted it and live with it. Some do not, and they resist the king of the fence. They rebel and overthrow the king. They set up a group of people chosen by everyone to rule the fence. They decide sneezing is allowed, but they prohibit farting. You decide to leave the fence.

But as you do, there is a hedge. You get over the hedge and you are captured. They think you are a fence spy, so they decide to kill you. You ask for forgiveness and assure them you are not. They allow you to live in the hedge. The fog swirls counterclockwise in the hedge. The hedge is a community. Everyone is equal. Everyone is assigned jobs at birth and they do them. If they want to do something else, they are killed. Everyone is assigned food rations and that is all you get; if you want more, you are killed. The people accept it. They are proud hedge people. But some do not like it, they rebel and overthrow the community. They want freedom. They enforce freedom in the hedge. Anyone who says anything against freedom is killed. You decide to leave. The hedge people were suspicious about you and decide you really were a spy. This was the last straw. They attack the fence. The fence retaliates as proud ‘fencians’ do. There is blood. The fog is still.

The fog is your world. You cannot make sense of it. There is no interpretation. You don’t know what to do or where to go. All you can do is pretend to understand. The shapes in the fog are all the beliefs we have. They are desperate musings of a confused mind. They exist not in the fog but our heads. The fog has no shapes; the world has no beliefs of its own, only what we force on it. And so we are all stumbling around in an abysmal fog, trying to find meaning, trying to find anything. Some people claim to have figured out the fog, and we, desperate for something to believe in, convince ourselves that their perspective makes sense. Some people pretend to own the fog, to be from the fog, but we aren’t, the fog has nothing to do with us. The fog does not need us; the world does not need us. It is different at every point, and it is the same everywhere. The fog does not need to be defended; it just exists and we exist alongside it. Without our feeble attempts at making sense of the world, we would just be frightened, disoriented people desperate to get out, desperate to make sense of our surroundings, desperate to control it even. But we can’t, and our inadequacies are making us angry, our insecurities about our beliefs are making us violent. There is no right or wrong, there is only our own set of morals, based on our perceptions and then we try to force them onto the world. And when we find people with different perspectives, different ways of making sense of this fog, we do not like them. We blame people with different morals, we ostracize them. We are too scared to face the fact that none of us knows what is going on. None of us can make sense of this. It is too frightening. But should that end our pursuit of making sense of the world? No, if anything it should make us work harder. There should be a never-ending pursuit to find all the different perspectives and to understand them.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of The Jamia Review or its members.

The Abysmal Fog

Anxiety is when you experience more than usual levels of stress or worry about seemingly normal or day to day activities. It is very common in the general population nowadays. But when anxiety becomes extremely severe and starts interfering with daily life, it transitions into a medically diagnosable disorder called

which affects an estimated 284 million people in the world.

The word anxiety immediately brings to mind an image of a person standing in front of an audience, nervous and not able to speak. This image of anxiety has been promoted by the media and has become the layman’s interpretation of what it is. Social anxiety (another form of anxiety disorder) and generalized anxiety disorder are often used interchangeably. Hence, the stereotypical assumption that being shy is a sign of anxiety or that an anxious person would always be shy or timid. In reality, that is only one aspect of what anxiety looks like.

High functioning anxiety is a term made popular by the internet but is not an actual medically recognized disorder. It serves as a sharp contrast to the usual stereotypical image of generalized anxiety disorder, which as assumed, renders a person useless. High functioning anxiety looks like an extremely well put-together person. To the world they seem to have everything in order, they’re successful, competitive and generally very well-liked. If one has high functioning anxiety, he may find that instead of holding him back as anxiety usually tends to do, it ends up forcing him so much forward that he even becomes an overachiever. Someone with high functioning anxiety may be the epitome of perfection. People may say they are driven, competitive, hard working and so on, but fear of failure, worry about lacking behind, or disappointing others, or nervous energy may be the causes of most of their achievements. What people can’t see are the high levels of anxiety behind all these actions. In other words, someone with high-functioning anxiety might experience severe anxious symptoms like worrying a lot, racing thoughts and losing sleep but they white-knuckle their way through it anyway.

If not paid attention to, this form of generalized anxiety disorder goes unnoticed in many individuals since most of its effects end up seeming positive. A lot of times, the person never realizes that this amount of stress isn’t normal. He assumes that that’s how everyone is living every day. For example, a person may take pride in himself on being punctual but it’s really his anxiety that makes him worry about all the things that could make him late so instead he reaches early. This wouldn’t be considered a cause of worry for other people as being punctual isn’t really a sign of declining mental health.

While it may seem like a positive thing that your anxiety makes you an overachiever, it is only short-lived before the negative effects catch up to you. People with such traits end up not doing anything out of their comfort zone because they fear both not being able to be good at everything, and showing to people their vulnerable sides. They always wish to appear effortlessly good at every task. Struggling or showing weakness isn’t an option. High functioning anxious people tend not to do things just for fun and end up becoming competitive or feeling like they need to be perfect at it. This leads them to not being able to expand their horizons or learn new things. More often than not they may also apply this to their emotions where they will feel that their ‘negative’ or ‘weak’ emotions should not be shown to people and so they bottle them up without dealing with them.

A lot of traits exhibited by high functioning anxious people are considered positive and seen as desirable. This is also a reason that even after being diagnosed people do not get treatment because they’re afraid of ‘losing their edge’. Some of these traits include:

Socially outgoing (easily making friends or making small talk to new people)

All of the traits mentioned above seem desirable and something which would lead to success but people don’t always know that these actions are caused by anxiety. They fail to understand how it can lead to such positive habits. Some of the negative characteristics of high functioning anxiety are:

People pleaser (need to be liked by everyone and caring about everybody’s opinion of them, fear of disappointing people)

Nervous habits (such as playing with your hair, cracking knuckles, biting your lip)

Need for reassurance (asking for directions multiple times or checking on their relationship with others frequently)

Over thinking and tendency to dwell on the negative (“What if?” thoughts and focusing on past mistakes)

Wasting time (arriving too early or doing nothing else for the rest of the day for appointments)

Procrastination followed by long periods of intense, stressful work

Keeping yourself busy to avoid thinking too much

Always having an overloaded schedule, being constantly busy

Insomnia (difficulty falling asleep or waking early and being unable to fall back asleep)

Sometimes considered stoic, unemotional or cold by other people for not showing emotions

Unable to relax or enjoy the moment and be in the present

Potential for alcohol or substance abuse as an unhealthy coping method

If this article sounds like it’s describing you and you wish to change that, the first and most obvious way is to 

. But if therapy is not an option, here are some tips that might help. The first step is to start by recognizing your symptoms for what they are. Understand that this is as real as a physical ailment and not something that you should blame yourself for. Recognize your anxiety as an intruder and not as a part of you or your personality and treat it as such. Pay attention to your thoughts and give yourself reminders when you find your train of thought going towards a spiral of anxious thoughts. Allow yourself to have lazy days or days where accomplishing something isn’t important. Explore new territory, as tough as it may be. Recognize that fear may always be a part of your life but it shouldn’t be stopping you from doing whatever you want. Even if it is small, start by pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and allowing new experiences. Eliminate the pressure about disappointing people and look for your own happiness first. Be open with people and seek help from friends and allow yourself to relax once in a while. Self managing anxiety is only possible once you recognize how much of your thoughts are you and how much of them are your anxiety.

High Functioning Anxiety

Are serial killers dangerous or attractive? A certain fascination and mystery has always surrounded serial killers and mass murderers. What goes on in their heads? Do they experience guilt? How do they justify their actions? These questions have led to an ever-increasing rise in media revolving around said criminals. This essay includes an exploration of depictions of murderers in popular media and the criminal fandoms that seem to revere and idealize these murderers.

Why Females Are Sexually Attracted To Serial Killers ?

Serial killer enthusiasts not only include people interested in criminal psychology but also people sexually and/or romantically attracted to these personalities. Turns out, there’s a word for it. 

a sexual interest in and an attraction to those who commit crimes

.

It is understood to be a paraphilia in which sexual arousal, facilitation, and attainment of orgasm are contingent upon being with a partner known to have committed a crime. In pop-culture, this phenomenon is also known as the “

“. Even though this is not a very well documented and researched phenomenon, it has been observed to be most common in young females directed towards white male cis-gendered serial killers with “

Conversation about the media’s role in romanticising serial killers opened up with the release of the 

Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

 in the role of one of the most popular serial killers in history, 

. The movie was accused of portraying Bundy in a charming and likeable manner that encouraged sympathy towards him. Supporters of the movie argued that Bundy was famously good looking and charming and used this to lure victims, so the movie does an extremely good job depicting the same. Though movies and other media may encourage romanticising of criminals, fandoms for serial killers existed long before internet fandoms were the norm.

, was known to specifically target young women and kill them in extremely torturous ways. Yet his ‘fandom’ today and then mainly consisted of young female fans, even teenagers, and some who even consider themselves stout feminists but manage to justify or ignore Bundy’s actions.



Bundy, who represented himself in court, would usually be greeted with applause and a packed courtroom whenever he went to the stand. He was already a celebrity when he was awarded the death penalty, but his death, which wasn’t delayed for too long, promoted him to legendary status. He now has 

. During his trial, Bundy proposed to a woman named 

 who he had worked with previously and she accepted.

Another such name popular among female fans is 

, also known as the night stalker. Ramirez was tried for 

13 counts of murder, 5 counts of attempted murder

several counts of sexual assault and burglary

. Much like Bundy, he too showed no remorse for his actions or tried to justify them. But his popularity grew nonetheless; fan mail would arrive for him every week, visiting days would see long lines of women at the prison.

Media referred to such women as prison groupies. One of these woman was 

 who interacted with Ramirez through letters and later got married to him in 1996. Although she said she would kill herself if Ramirez was executed, she eventually left him and at 53, Ramirez was engaged to a 23-year-old when he was finally executed.

most of the killers show no remorse for their actions, their “

. According to experts, this attraction towards dangerous personalities may be based in narcissism which is fed by thoughts of being special enough to love and be loved by a person that the rest of the society has effectively rejected. It may also be caused by a 

 where they feel that they hold the power to “

” the person.

A similar depiction can be seen in media where it is common to see women characters attracted to the “

” character. Some of these women also either simply refuse to believe that these men committed these crimes, or justify their actions by blaming society, their upbringing, or their desire for being loved. Some claim they are simply fascinated by the danger and rush of being with someone who is known to have killed people. A lot of these people admit that this attraction is simply unexplainable and unreasonable.

 Serial Killers: Dangerous or Attractive?

(2016) is another one in a long list of movies that use the guise of calling themselves a ‘

‘ to disparage mental illnesses. And unfortunately, what is an easier way to demonise a mental illness than to show it changing a person into an actual demon.

, who gained attention for being the first person to use the defense of 

 and helped write a biography about his life called 

 which provides fascinating insight into how it felt being inside his head. Split, on the other hand managed to make a mockery out of it. While it started in a surprisingly sophisticated way, showing details about 

 that seemed realistic and definitely more up to date than the usual regressive portrayals of multiple personalities, the movie soon took a turn from common sense and logic, as it tried to guide us towards the idea that 

, including miniscule changes to his face when Kevin’s personality changed. He managed to act like a 

 all within minutes. His portrayal gave you exactly the kind of creepy, unsettling feeling you would expect from such a movie. He, somehow, also convinced us that he was one personality trying to act like another personality. The scene where he tries to convince his therapist that he’s not who she thinks he is, is perhaps one of the most fascinating scenes in the movie, though it felt as if having a powerful actor like McAvoy at their disposal was a waste since they managed to make almost no use of his potential. McAvoy’s performance may have saved the whole movie if not for the last twenty minutes when everything took a turn for the worse. The movie had till now been hinting at the fact that 

, and had shown Kevin talking about a personality called ‘

‘ who was supposed to be their saviour. 

It was difficult to sympathise or even understand why ‘the beast’ even existed because of the lack of insight into Kevin’s past. He was shown to develop superhuman abilities solely because of his dissociative identity disorder who kills two of the three hostages that he had. Even McAvoy’s acting cannot not save you from the cringe you would feel watching the beast prowl around looking for Casey.

We definitely got a deeper look into Casey’s history than we did into Kevin’s. 

, showed delightfully great acting skills, although the wide-eyed scared look at times did get a little too monotonous. But being confronted by a man who is also a child and a lady can definitely do that to a person. Casey was given a full backstory which explained all the survival skills she had but the amount of time spent on her backstory made it seem like she would have some connection with Kevin that would later be revealed, which wasn’t the case. She was shown to be the lone survivor at the end of the movie because of her ‘

‘, a concept that was very vague and provided an unsatisfying end to the movie, since we didn’t even know why that was so important to Kevin who is shown to be a victim of abuse in his childhood only fleetingly.

Kevin’s original personality came out only for a few minutes but could’ve been explored in a more detailed way to make the audience understand how he wasn’t actually a bad guy. His therapist, who definitely didn’t act how a real therapist treating someone with 

 should, managed to get herself killed and her death becomes just another cause of frustration since she could have contained the situation very easily. All in all, the movie managed to take a potentially great idea and cheapen it for a few seconds of forced horror that was unnecessary called for. McAvoy and his acting emerged as the only silver linings in the otherwise disappointing take on dissociative identity disorder. 

The movie through its plot may also have played a part in demonising mental illness and strengthening already existing biases against them.

SPLIT – A Psychological Horror or A Mockery of Mental Illness(es)?

Colour psychology is the study of effects that colours have on our behaviours and choices. Commonly used in marketing, most brands focus on the colours they want attached to their product based on its utility and target audience. For example, brands whose target audience are women tend to go for colours that have hues of femininity such as shades of red and pink, while brands that hope to appeal to children lean towards bright attention grabbing colours. Although the history of colours with marketing is pretty straightforward and universally acceptable, much is yet to be explored about colours and their roles in our lives.

The study of colours in psychology hasn’t been done formally for a long time but the study of how colours affect our lives has been a topic of discussion long before psychology developed as a science. 

 first came up with a theory that was somewhat related to the modern theory of perceiving colours. He related them to the four elements – earth, water, fire and air, describing how fire had the colour red and yellow in it while air stood for the colour white. In 1810, 

) about his views on the nature of colours and how these are perceived by humans. It was published in English in 1840. Goethe’s work was the first of its kind to start considering the physiological aspect of colours.

While it is not something we need for survival, colours play a vital role in our daily lives. Some researchers believe that their importance is based in our primitive instincts, the ones we needed to survive in the wild but which we have now adapted to more sophisticated uses. Colours influence our opinions about objects and in some cases, people, even before we think about it. An object’s colour may very well be one of the first things we notice about it before it’s shape or size. We are very easily swayed when choosing which brands to shop with, just by their brand colours. Even blind or colour blind people are sensitive to colour psychology. Nature has very diverse examples of how colours have meanings, with plants and animals taking on bright colours like red to discourage predators or to make sure other animals know that they’re dangerous.

Colour psychology is usually confused with colour symbolism. Colour symbolism is that which happens due to cultures, religions or geographical biases and makes us attach different meanings to different colours, while colour psychology is more focussed on unconscious colour preferences which show a person’s personality. These two may not be the same thing but they are extremely interrelated. A few examples of colour symbolism are how the western world views white as a colour symbolising purity and is used at weddings, in 

 and some other countries, white is the colour to be worn at funerals because it symbolises sorrow. A lot of times the symbolism may contradict itself for certain people in certain areas. For example, green which is seen as the colour representing jealousy in 

‘, also represents wealth and social status because of the green dollars. Both the interpretations are familiar to 

, but the meaning they choose to primarily attach to the colour green is based entirely on them and their personal experiences. This difficulty of differentiating between colour psychology and colour symbolism, and the diverseness of colour symbolism may be the biggest discouragement to more research on these topics.

A study in 2010 found that the world’s favourite colour is blue, this was based on averages which made people question the absoluteness of the result because different colours mean different things everywhere in the world. But the researchers believed how you feel about a colour depends on how you feel about objects of that colour. Since blue is associated with water and the sky, things that are not restricted to any one part of the world, that’s the colour everybody loves. But this research is just one example of how tough it is to carry out any sort of research related to colour psychology because how a person feels about a colour could be affected even by a single event from their childhood. Other limitations which researchers face when studying colour psychology are the shades and tones in colours. There are eleven basic colours recognised by everyone but even a slight shift in tone or shade may result in a completely new colour. It isn’t sure how much this would affect people feeling about a particular colour but it is known that they respond differently to warm toned colours and cool toned colours, and that the same colour can exist in both warm and cool toned forms.

A significant amount of research that has taken place till now is focused on colour preferences of a group or of an individual and how they reveal their personalities. The results are seen mostly in personality quizzes that you may find online which determine the type of person you are based on which colours you prefer or what meanings you associate with them. An important part of colour preference which is usually forgotten is that when other people associate a particular colour with a person. Different people see different aspects of our personality and this affects how they think of us in general. At the same time, people sharing the same culture tend to relate the same meaning to a colour. Thus, what colour a person attaches to our personality may tell us a lot about how they perceive us if we have a general idea of what that colour symbolises for them. This, again, has a lot of hurdles such as the fact that sometimes people don’t consciously know what meaning they have attached to a particular colour, so there is no exact way of knowing it. Even if culture and religion are taken into account, personal biases may also exist. In addition, some associations that people make with another person are made unconsciously simply because they see that person wearing that colour a lot or talking about it a lot, and have nothing to do with their personality. Since colour psychology is backed by such little research, it has a lot of disbelievers and appropriately so. Most of what is known about it is not usually backed by facts and is extremely vague. Yet, it has stayed a topic of interest because of its obvious results and conclusions that seem sensible even if there is little research to back them. This only proves that colour psychology is a potentially vast field of research waiting its turn.

Articles by Sulmaaz Siddiqui

The Term Gaslighting: Its Uses and Abuses

The Abysmal Fog

High Functioning Anxiety

Serial Killers: Dangerous or Attractive?

SPLIT – A Psychological Horror or A Mockery of Mental Illness(es)?

COLOUR PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS UNTAPPED POTENTIAL

The Term Gaslighting: Its Uses and Abuses

The Abysmal Fog

High Functioning Anxiety

Serial Killers: Dangerous or Attractive?

SPLIT – A Psychological Horror or A Mockery of Mental Illness(es)?

COLOUR PSYCHOLOGY AND ITS UNTAPPED POTENTIAL