In "The King of the Golden Hall" (LotR bk III, ch 6), Wormtongue's steady lies and evil counsel over a period of years have managed to sap Théoden's strength until he sees himself as a doddering old man. Gandalf breaks the "spell" with a little sound-and-light show that leaves the cowardly Wormtongue face down on the floor, then gives Théoden a solo pep talk and encourages him to remember and re-embrace his own strength by casting aside his staff and holding a sword. Théoden is soon ready to hear the news (the need for action to protect his people) and reacts to it as a king should. When Wormtongue is brought back, he tries to salvage the situation with a little gaslighting:
'Dear lord!' cried Wormtongue. 'It is as I feared. This wizard has bewitched you. Are none to be left to defend the Golden Hall of your fathers, and all your treasure? None to guard the Lord of the Mark?'
'If this is bewitchment,' said Théoden, 'it seems to me more wholesome than your whisperings. Your leechcraft ere long would have had me walking on all fours like a beast. [...]'
So the ploy doesn't work; the erstwhile victim has come to see things clearly. But note the form of response. He doesn't flat-out contradict Wormtongue. He shies away ever-so-slightly from the direct confrontation by taking Wormtongue's premise as possibly or hypothetically true, and choosing Gandalf's way over Wormtongue's way as "more wholesome," even if magic is involved.
Lewis tackles something a bit like this in "The Queen of Underland" (The Silver Chair, ch. 12). An evil witch has kidnapped and bewitched Prince Rilian of Narnia, giving him amnesia so that he will fall in with her plans. She has had him in her power for years. Puddleglum and the children free Rilian during one of his brief moments of lucidity, and he smashes the instrument of his magical enslavement. The witch returns, and quickly creates a new enchantment to cloud the thinking of Rilian and his rescuers, while she works to gaslight them into believing that her dreary underground caves are the only reality.
She deflects and denies all their attempts to "prove" (or get her to acknowledge) the existence of the sunlit world they have always known, half-persuading them that they have invented or dreamed it all. So when Puddleglum finally manages to break this new enchantment, he does not try to reject the witch's false premises. Instead, he takes them as at least presumptively true and explains why he chooses the ways of Narnia and Aslan over the witch's way even if they are mere illusions.
"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."
(italics in original; bold added)
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