FAMILY SECRETS by Rosie Perera 051657

APPL 532: Christian Understanding of the Family Paddy Ducklow

Regent College August 16, 1999

Keeping a secret is the first step in becoming an individual. Telling it is the second step. Paul Tournier1 All families have secrets, whether conscious or unconscious, individual or shared, healthy or harmful. Some secrets remain hidden for a lifetime; others are uncovered either accidentally or intentionally, resulting in freedom or disaster. Family secrets serve various functions from surprises to self-protection. This paper takes a family systems look at how secrets affect persons and relationships in a family and the role that disclosure plays in the health of the family. Various approaches to family secrets in therapy will be discussed. We will end with a biblical analysis of the subject. Introduction Research seems to show that secrecy exists in all social organizations. It is particularly interesting to study secrets in the context of the family because the family is the primary emotional influence on developing persons.2 As we shall see, family secrets and their disclosures have profound effects on the individuals involved. Little research had been done specifically on family secrets until the early 80s. Since then it has been a burgeoning subject of study, driven by the increasing societal awareness of and public opening of family secrets. Case histories abound wherein family secrets have been implicated in serious dysfunction, and where positive change has occurred once the secret was disclosed. Pincus and Dare give the example of a man who had a mental breakdown when a colleague was killed in a motor-cycle accident, and he blamed himself for the mans death. In therapy, the story emerged that he thought he had caused the deaths of his two younger sisters by infecting them with scarlet fever when they were all very young children. All he knew was that when he had come home from his isolation at the hospital his parents had told him his sisters had died, with no explanation. He kept his secret fear from his parents all his life, assuming they blamed him and were angry at him for it. This made him emotionally distant from them growing up. He cut off all relations with them when he left their home. It was not until years later when he was married with children that a therapist helped him see the connection between the false guilt he was experiencing over his colleagues death and this childhood fear. The therapist encouraged him to contact his parents. They were delighted to hear from him and assured him that his sisters deaths had not been his fault. One had died of meningitis and the other in a car accident. It turned out that in their own sense of guilt over their daughters deaths, the parents had not

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Paul Tournier, Secrets (London: SCM Press, 1965), front cover. Naima Brown-Smith, Family Secrets, Journal of Family Issues 19, no. 1 (1998): 20-1. 1

been able to talk to their son about the events. The secrecy surrounding the deaths caused him to think he had been responsible for them.3 This kind of story is not uncommon, leading many in the therapeutic fields to believe that family secrets are always pathological and should be unearthed and revealed. Alongside that, we have the current phenomenon of people going before a live audience of strangers on TV shows such as Oprah to disclose secrets to their family members, without anticipating the painful repercussions it will have in the lives of those affected. Where is the balance? Are family secrets always harmful? When and how should they be revealed? We shall attempt to answer these questions, but first we need some background on the theory of family secrets.

Definitions There are two categories of people involved in a family secret. There are the secret holders and the unawares (the people from whom the secret is being kept). The subject of a secret is the person or persons whom the secret is about. It may be the secret holder(s) or the unaware(s), or some other person(s). For example, in the case of a family in which the parents have not told the daughter she is adopted, the secret holders are the parents, and the unaware is the child, who is also the subject of the secret. In a family with a homosexual son who has come out to his sister but not his parents, the subject is one of the secret-holders. Nearly all families have secrets of one kind or another. In a study conducted by Vangelisti, the vast majority (99.1%) of the respondents reported that they had family secrets, either things they had not told their family, or secrets shared within their family.4 Most people have an intuitive notion of a family secret as the proverbial skeleton in the closet. Grolnick defines a family secret as existential facts hidden from other members or from those outside the family.5 This definition is too broad for our purposes, because it includes such things as would normally be considered private but not secret. Karpel names the relevance of the issue to the unaware as the factor that distinguishes between what is secret and what is private. Information withheld that impinges on the unaware, such as an extramarital affair, is a secret. Information which is personal but irrelevant may be considered private but not a secret, for example the intimate details of ones

Lily Pincus and Christopher Dare, Secrets in the Family (London: Faber & Faber, 1978), 12-14. Anita L. Vangelisti, Family Secrets: Forms, Functions and Correlates, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 11 (1994): 119. 5 Lawrence Grolnick, Ibsens Truth, Family Secrets, and Family Therapy, Family Process 22 (1983): 276. 2
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previous relationships if they have no bearing on the marriage.6 Thus our working definition of a family secret is any information that directly affects or concerns one but is either withheld or differentially shared between or among family members.7 Over half of all family secrets involve sexual issues.8 Aspects of family life which have been the focus of secrets include sexual orientation, premarital pregnancy, abortion, incest, extramarital affairs, cohabitation, adoption, new birth technologies (e.g., donor insemination), marital problems or divorce, alcoholism or drug abuse, physical abuse, mental illness, suicide, financial troubles or windfalls, illegal activities, physical health (e.g., AIDS), religion, personality conflicts, rule breaking, and racial or immigration background. Although most secrets involve taboos (activities which are stigmatized or condemned by society or church or other family members), some are simply things which are inappropriate to discuss outside the family, such as rituals and family traditions. Brown-Smith names four dimensions of a family secret: breadth, duration, depth, and valence. Breadth refers to the amount of information contained in the secret. Duration is the length of time the secret is held. Depth concerns the degree of intimacy of the secret and is a rather subjective measure, as is valence, the extent to which the secret is positive or negative.9 A family myth is a fictionalized account of some aspect of family life, usually based in fact but embellished by individual family members illusions. Often there is a family secret at the root of a family myth.10 There are two kinds of family myths: one is the falsehood that the family wants to present about itself to the outside world, the other is the explanation of reality that grows in the mind of a child who is made to keep the secret.11 Both kinds can be passed down for generations and develop quite a life of their own. Family myths can arise from rules about whom not to tell certain things. For example, Dont tell Mom; shell just go into another depression. Often no one has ever tried to see if Mom will get depressed when you talk about that subject.12 Any discussion of family secrets cries out for a family systems approach, because secrets affect boundaries and subsystems, and they tend to have generational patterns. A subsystem in a family is any Mark A. Karpel, Family Secrets, Family Process 19 (1980): 298. Brown-Smith, 23. 8 Brown-Smith, 27. 9 Brown-Smith, 26. 10 Grolnick, 276. 11 Thomas J. Cottle, Childrens Secrets (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press / Doubleday, 1980), 250. 12 Kathleen M. Galvin and Bernard J. Brommel, Family Communication: Cohesion and Change (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), 65. 3
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group of two or more members and the relationships between them. The basic subsystems are the marital dyad, the group of siblings, and the parenting subsystem (involving parent and child).13 Families have internal boundaries and external boundaries. Internal boundaries concern relationships between and within subsystems in the family, while external boundaries are between the family as a whole and the outside world.14

Classification of Secrets In the standard typology proposed by Karpel and adopted by others, there are three kinds of family secrets: individual secrets, internal family secrets, and shared family secrets. This is sometimes referred to as the location of the secret. Individual secrets are when one person keeps a secret from the rest of the family, for example when a teenage daughter gets an abortion without telling her parents. Internal family secrets are when two or more members of the family share a secret together which they withhold from the rest of the family, for example when a couple does not tell their children that the husband was previously married and there are some half-siblings. Shared family secrets involve situations where the whole family knows about something and hides it from the outside world. Dysfunctional families are more likely to have shared family secrets than other families.15 For example the family of an alcoholic is apt to hide that persons behavior from the outside world and thus enable the alcoholism. Similarly when the children in a family have been sexually abused by one parent, the family is strongly inclined to keep that a secret. Shared family secrets are the type most frequently cited in family therapy literature.16 This does not necessarily mean they are more common. It could be because they are more easily revealed than the other kinds in the context of therapy; in fact, the topic of a shared secret may well be the reason a family seeks therapy. Within the category of shared family secrets, Imber-Black identifies a subcategory which are those secrets which the family knows about but pretends not to know (never talks about).17 This is also known as a pseudo-secret.18 An example might be a Jewish family who lost members in the Holocaust but avoids that topic of conversation. Another category of secret which Imber-Black points out is the secret which is located Galvin and Brommel, 44. Galvin and Brommel, 27. 15 Vangelisti (1994), 115. 16 Brown-Smith, 28. 17 Evan Imber-Black, Secrets in Families and Family Therapy: An Overview in Secrets in Families and Family Therapy (New York: Norton, 1993), 22. 18 Grolnick, 276. 4
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entirely outside the family, keeping all the family members who are the subject(s) of the secret in the dark. This may include such things as diagnoses, medical histories of adoptees biological parents, etc.19 In much of the literature, family secrets always have a negative connotation. But there can be good secrets as well. Imber-Black lists three levels of family secrets: positive, toxic, and dangerous. Positive secrets are those which facilitate family rituals, surprises, adolescent differentiation, vulnerability and intimacy between couples, and solidarity among oppressed people. Toxic secrets are those that erode relationships or cause debilitating symptoms in individuals. Dangerous secrets are those which require immediate intervention to protect someones safety (e.g., child abuse).20

Mechanism and Functions of Family Secrets There are various ways of maintaining secrecy, ranging from omission to outright deception. Family members may fail to share relevant facts with others who do not even know there is anything to be found out (for example neglecting to tell a grandmothers friends she has had a stroke and is in the hospital). The family may neglect to correct other peoples false assumptions. Or they may present a detailed but false story that makes it seem that the truth has been told (for example answering an inquiry about a black eye with a story about falling down the stairs, when really there was spousal abuse going on). The triangles formed by family secrets are complex and fluid. Often the existence of the secretholding dyad is itself a secret. In one case a mother promised to keep a secret about her adult sons drug abuse from his father; she told the father however, and asked him not to tell the son or the therapist that shed revealed the secret; the father proceeded to meet privately with the therapist and told her the secret, requesting that she keep the fact of his disclosure a secret from his wife.21 Why do people keep secrets, even when they are harmful? Vangelisti cites four main functions that family secrets serve: 1) they develop intimacy; 2) they promote cohesiveness insider secrets identify people as members of the group; 3) they maintain family structure (i.e., keep the family from falling apart), for example, family members of an alcoholic will put up with great sacrifices in order to keep the family intact; 4) they protect family members from rejection or reproach, and protect the family image.22 Even a negative secret can be kept hidden because of perceived intimacy, as when a child thinks she is Daddys special girl Imber-Black (1993), 22 Imber-Black (1993), 11. 21 Imber-Black (1993), 9. 22 Vangelisti (1994), 116-7.
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because he sexually abuses her. Other reasons why people keep secrets include: protecting family members from pain or stress, protection against others using information against family members, privacy or irrelevancy (its nobody elses business), and closed communication style within the family.23 Family members who are in the dark about a secret collude at some level with the secret-holder in keeping themselves unaware. Their motives include a desire to maintain a manageable level of anxiety in the family, and to keep the channels of communication open.24

Benefits of Family Secrets Despite the common association of family secrets as negative, withholding information can serve a necessary purpose and can even be beneficial in interpersonal relationships. Brown-Smith names several positive functions of family secrets: they reinforce family cohesion, they give the family a shared identity, they filter out irrelevant information, they can give a person an aura of mystery which can be an attractive trait, they help individuals maintain a sense of uniqueness in the family, they reduce boredom by giving the opportunity for surprises, they establish predictability, they maintain harmony (people dont just say whatever comes to their mind, which may be tactless or threatening).25 One of the most important positive functions of secrecy is differentiation. It is to the extent that [a child] has secrets from his parents that he gains an awareness of self...of being distinct from them, of having his own individuality, of being a person.26 In pathological cases where a mother allows her child no secrets and is constantly invasive, the child is likely to encounter difficulties maintaining separate ego boundaries.27 This need to differentiate through secrets continues into adolescence and adulthood. Parents prying into the lives of their adult children when they get married often ruin the relationship with their children and their spouses. People need secrecy from their parents in order to form a couple.28 Secrets develop intimacy. A couple shares things with each other that they would not tell anyone else. The bond of sexual intimacy is the gift of the supreme secret...the most personal secret, ones own body.29 Keeping secrets can give power to the powerless. A wife whose husband is abusive might hide the Vangelisti (1994), 123. Nicholas C. Avery, Family Secrets, Psychoanalytic Review 69 (1982): 483. 25 Brown-Smith, 31-2. 26 Tournier, 8. 27 Theodore J. Jacobs, Secrets, Alliances, and Family Fictions: Some Psychoanalytic Observations, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 28 (1980): 37. 28 Tournier, 24-25. 29 Tournier, 47. 6
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fact that she has some money from an inheritance and plans to leave him. Secrets also establish appropriate generational boundaries in the family. It would be inappropriate for parents to discuss the details of their sexual relationship with their children, for example, and often parents will keep certain financial secrets until their children are older.

Drawbacks of Family Secrets Karpel identifies five drawbacks of family secrets. They cause confusion because the truth is distorted, and convoluted explanations may be made to cover things up. They cause anxiety in both the secret-holder and the unaware. The secret-holder is afraid of disclosure and gets anxious when topics related to the secret come up in conversation. The unaware perceives tension in the secret-holder and this causes anxiety. Secrets hinder the relief of shame and guilt by keeping these feelings sealed up. Secrets damage relationships within the family. Secrets have the inherent risk of accidental disclosure or discovery which can have devastating results.30 The negative effects depend on the location of the secret. Individual secrets strain the relationships between the secret-holder and the rest of the family members. Internal family secrets are detrimental to the family because they create boundaries between subgroups, which can end up as estrangements. But shared family secrets are believed to be the most harmful, because they cut off the family from people around them who could provide help or intervention if needed.31 For our discussion, we will divide the major harmful results of family secrets into five categories: psychological or emotional effects (either on the unawares or the secret-holders), physical symptoms or behavioral problems, damage to relationships, homeostasis, and power imbalances. Other miscellaneous drawbacks of family secrets are: they build up a tolerance for lies and deception, they allow people to avoid taking responsibility for their actions, they prevent people from seeking understanding and comfort from others, they can inhibit peoples ability to trust others, they can induce people to be fake in their relationships.32 Psychological and Emotional Effects. Family secrets contribute to a distorted sense of reality, which is a risk factor in developing mental disorders.33 Children create elaborate fantasies to explain things Karpel, 300. Brown-Smith, 28. 32 Brown-Smith, 34-5. 33 Matteo Selvini, Family Secrets: The Case of the Patient Kept in the Dark, Contemporary Family Therapy 19 (1997): 316. 7
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which are kept from them, as in the example cited above of the man who blamed himself for his sisters deaths. When children are told to keep an experience secret, not only the external event but also their own private reactions to the event become the substance of the secret for them. Their myths about their family and themselves grow out of that. In their attempts to make sense of the experience, they begin to see themselves as somehow evil and/or counterfeit because they are hiding their own selves from the world.34 People who are left out of secrets may still have a vague idea of the matter without knowing the full truth. This blurred sense of something covert lends itself to gross misinterpretation and can result in perceptual distortion of self in relation to significant others.35 Even when a child is aware of a secret it can be damaging. If the event or discovery is not sufficiently traumatic in itself, the requirement that it be kept secret can cause psychological harm to a child. Holding on tightly to a secret can convince a child he or she is crazy. Being told to forget you heard that or nothing happened last night causes children to doubt their own perceptions and diminishes their capacity to remember other things, including what they learn in school.36 Learning disabilities often accompany family secrets. When family secrets have been prevalent during a persons development, it is likely that he will have difficulty trusting his own perceptions and judgment in later life.37 Selvinis study of schizophrenics led him to postulate that denial of suffering on the part of parents leads to psychological problems in the children. His hypothesis consists of a three-generation perspective on serious psychological dysfunction: the middle generation has developed a defense mechanism of denial to deal with painful events suffered in childhood or in their relationship with their parents; this denial has allowed them to remain functional, but the secrecy involved has been a factor contributing to their childrens mental disorders.38 Attempts to conceal a secret have the paradoxical result of causing people to be obsessively preoccupied with the secret because of their attempts to suppress their thoughts about it. This makes accidental disclosure more likely rather than less likely, and has the unwanted effect of intrusive thoughts bothering the secret-holder. These cognitive consequences of secrecy can linger on beyond when the secret

Cottle, 247-8. Barbara Cristy, Family Secrets in Family Therapy: An Ethical Dilemma, Social Thought 8, 3 (1982): 48. 36 Brown-Smith, 35. 37 Jacobs, 35. 38 Selvini, 325. 8
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is revealed.39 Adolescents spend a huge amount of time and energy on the process of myth making, philosophizing about their family secret(s), turning them over and over in their minds to understand them and deal with them. This can be a totally absorbing mental activity during much of a persons adolescent years.40 Families which hide their problems in a cloak of secrecy become bound up in shame. The shame accompanying secrets in family history is often masked by symptoms which present themselves in therapy: fear of intimacy, perfectionism, self-defeating behaviors, low self-esteem, anxiety, anger, and depression.41 Physical Symptoms and Behavioral Effects. Symptoms (such as alcoholism or eating disorders) may be the topic of a secret, but they may also be the result of secret-keeping in one of three ways: they may act as metaphors or ways of speaking out about unmentionable secrets; they may function as distractions from the secret problem by providing a safe problem for the family to focus on; or they may be a mechanism for coping with the anxiety and guilt that arise from secrecy.42 Children and teens frequently act out as a result of the tension involved in keeping a family secret. A common secret-induced behavior is stealing from ones family or engaging in shoplifting.43 Violence and drugtaking may also be linked with family secrets.44 Damage to Relationships. Secrets create unhealthy boundaries in families. The obvious boundary is between the secret-holders and the unawares. But interestingly, the boundaries are not only related to knowing the secret but knowing who knows. Consider the case of a mother who tells each of her two sons, separately, a secret about their sister. She makes them promise not to tell the sister, but does not tell either of them that the other knows the secret. A boundary is created between the two secret-holding sons which is just as real as the boundary between either son and the unaware sister.45 Secrets also create split loyalties. If a mother confides in a son or daughter about a secret affair, it creates a complex relational triangle. The childs loyalty to his mother is a strong motivation for him to keep the secret, but he feels he is betraying his father if he doesnt tell him.

Julie D. Lane and Daniel M. Wegner, The Cognitive Consequences of Secrecy, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69 (1995): 237-9. 40 Cottle, 251. 41 Marilyn Mason, Shame: Reservoir for Family Secrets in Secrets in Families and Family Therapy, ed. Evan Imber-Black (New York: Norton, 1993), 39-40. 42 Imber-Black (1993), 14. 43 Evan Imber-Black, The Secret Life of Families (New York: Bantam, 1998), 157. 44 Cottle, 253. 45 Karpel, 297. 9
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Shared family secrets also strengthen a familys external boundaries. In extreme cases it can be difficult for family members to form close relationships with anyone outside the family. They cannot handle such emotional involvement without revealing the secret, yet they do not feel free to reveal the secret.46 Often secrets are kept in order to protect one or more family members. A child may be told by one parent not to worry the other parent about a matter. The subtle message being conveyed is that the other parent is not capable of dealing with serious issues; this fosters distancing between the child and that parent.47 Secrecy about an adoptees biological parents poisons the relationship between the adoptee and his or her adoptive parents. If the adoptive parents feel threatened by any questions or investigation, that engenders self-guilt about the natural curiosity that an adoptee has.48 One toxic secret in a family can breed a pattern of secret-keeping around completely unrelated topics, as interpersonal trust is eroded by the initial secret. Homeostasis. Secrets serve to reinforce homeostasis; there is strong resistance to change in a family system when secrets abound. Family secrets stabilize triangles and generate pathological family processes. They support the homeostasis of the family emotional system because openness and questioning are inherently subversive.49 Secrets can hinder problem-solving in families as conversation around the topic of the secret must necessarily be limited.50 Many secrets are born at times of intense relationship change in a family, such as marriage, divorce, birth, and death. A secret created at one of these key transition points can keep a family frozen in time, preventing its normal development through those life-cycle changes. Secrets between one spouse and his or her family of origin can prevent healthy development of the couples relationship. One example was when a womans parents did not consider the husband a suitable match for their daughter because he didnt have enough money, so they secretly gave the daughter money to keep in a private account.51 Power Imbalances. The secret-holder is in a position of power with respect to the unaware. There is an inherent instability in the relationship which drives the secret-holder towards destructive disclosure.52 Karpel, 297-8. Peggy Papp, The Worm in the Bud: Secrets Between Parents and Children, in Secrets in Families and Family Therapy, ed. Evan Imber-Black (New York: Norton, 1993), 72. 48 Ann Hartman, Secrecy in Adoption, in Secrets in Families and Family Therapy, ed. Evan Imber-Black (New York: Norton, 1993), 95. 49 Friedman, Edwin, Secrets and Systems, in Georgetown Family Symposia, Vol 2, ed. J. P. Lorio (District of Columbia: Georgetown Family Center, 1977), 63. Cited in Cristy, 42. 50 Imber-Black (1993), 13. 51 Imber-Black (1998), 38. 52 Karpel, 297. 10
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People sometimes reveal painful secrets to someone in order to be cruel. An example would be if a wife in anger blurts out to her husband that he is not the biological father of their child. Secrets can also make subjects vulnerable to blackmail, as threats of exposure can be instruments of coercion (e.g., If you dont do the dishes for me, Ill tell Mom you borrowed the car). Conversely, threats sometimes reinforce internal family secrets. For example a father who has sexually abused his daughter may threaten to punish her if she reveals the secret. Often abusers will invoke the right to privacy in the home to defend the secrecy.53

The Myth of Protection An important aspect of family secrets is who does the secret-holder think she is protecting by keeping the secret? It may be herself or the unaware or the subject. A wife may hide from her husband the fact that he is not the father of their youngest daughter. Is this to protect him from the hurt of betrayal? Or is it to protect the daughter from his withdrawal of love if he finds out she is not really his? Or both children from the possibility of divorce if their father should find out his wife had an affair? Perhaps all of the above, but basically she is protecting herself from her husbands potential anger. She is not taking responsibility for her own behavior.54 A common family secret is the diagnosis kept from a patient who has a terminal illness. Some fear that the truth will harm the patient and his family. Others testify to the peace and acceptance that come from being able to talk freely about the impending death, and the relief at no longer having to maintaining the deceitful conspiracy.55 Avery claims that sparing the dying patient the truth about his illness has been shown in fact to be self-sparing; the anxiety attributed to the dying patient should he learn the true nature of his illness often turns out to be a projection of the caretakers anxiety.56

Disclosure of Secrets Inadvertent disclosures of family secrets are relatively rare, but people do sometimes intentionally reveal a secret. Brown-Smith notes five reasons people disclose family secrets: the need to express thoughts

Imber-Black (1993), 20. Karpel, 299. 55 Pincus and Dare, 142. 56 Avery, 483.
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or feelings, the need to have ones point of view acknowledged, the need for social approval, the desire to establish a relationship, and the desire to control another persons behavior.57 Secrets are disclosed clearly and explicitly when the secret-holder feels a great urgency about telling, expects a positive result, and is not trying to use emotional control. On the other hand secret-holders will reveal secrets in an ambiguous or implicit manner when they have no strong need to tell, expect a negative outcome, or are trying to exert emotional control.58 Disclosure in cases of incest or physical abuse is hampered by the fact that the child may fear repercussions from the abusing parent. Generally a family puts a lot of energy into maintaining a shared secret when it involves some compromising truth about them (e.g., alcoholism, incest, or suicide). It is often a child who blows the whistle on such family secrets, indirectly through socially unacceptable behavior that attracts the attention of outside agencies. Papp gives the example of a family where the father lost his prestigious job, sank into a depression and began drinking, resorting to driving a cab for a living. The parents were so ashamed of this loss of status that they hid it from their son through elaborate deception. He found out accidentally when he saw his father in a cab waiting for a customer. When he confronted his parents they brought him into their web of deception and forbade him to tell his friends. The tension surrounding the lies he was forced to tell at school caused him to drop out and to begin acting violently towards his parents. They sought a court order to protect themselves. When they were forced to undergo family therapy, the family came out from under their shroud of secrecy and began telling their friends and relatives the truth. After this the sons violent behavior disappeared completely and he returned to school.59 Changing social conventions have removed the shame from some types of family secrets, making disclosure easier. For example, adoption used to be kept a secret even from the child in question, due to the stigma surrounding it, the assumption being that the child was illegitimate and the couple infertile. Similarly, alcoholism was considered shameful and was kept a secret. More recent views of alcoholism as a treatable disease and self-disclosure by public figures such as Betty Ford have made it possible for more people to be open about it and seek help. Wider acceptance of homosexuality has made coming out a more frequent occurrence.

Brown-Smith, 37-8. Brown-Smith, 37. 59 Papp, 70-2.

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Benefits of Disclosure on Family Systems While differentiation is one of the primary benefits of keeping a secret, it is also a sign of healthy development as a person when one is able to freely reveal a secret.60 Family therapists who follow Bowens model believe that family secrets inhibit individual family members from attaining higher levels of differentiation.61 Family members who keep secrets out of loyalty or a fear of hurting someones feelings are enmeshed in an unhealthy system. To become more differentiated, they need to make unemotional decisions about whether to disclose or not.62 Murray Bowens classic experiment with differentiating a self in his own family made liberal use of disclosure. Bowens mother would use secret communications to reinforce her position in the emotional system. His strategy was to reveal these secrets right away.63 Richardson suggests a way of detriangling in a family is to share openly what someone has told you in confidence.64 However, people who are too quick to open their hearts usually are not liberated by telling those secrets. The freedom from telling a secret comes only from the fact that it is a conscious choice made after having first kept the secret.65 Revealing family secrets is a potentially important act of communication.66 Families who can openly discuss or even joke about their faith, finances, or an ancestors illegal activities, will relate with each other in a more healthy way than those who hide their secrets in shame. When we are not hiding secrets, we can be more spontaneous and vulnerable. When a family member challenges a family secret, the other members of the family seem to change their attitudes towards the secret. As existing family secrets are unveiled, the family is less likely to tolerate new ones. All family members are suddenly put in the healthy but often threatening position of taking responsibility for their own feelings and actions instead of investing them in close others.67 Revealing secrets can reduce or eliminate dysfunction and acting out in a family. A five-year-old girl had a younger brother who had leukemia, but the parents did not tell the girl he was dying. She would Tournier, 29. Cristy, 41. 62 Ronald W. Richardson, Family Ties that Bind (North Vancouver, BC: Self-Counsel Press, 1995), 116. 63 Murray Bowen, Toward the Differentiation of a Self in Ones Own Family, published anonymously in Family Interaction: A Dialogue Between Family Researchers and Family Therapists, ed. James L. Framo (New York: Springer, 1972), 151. 64 Richardson, 115. 65 Tournier, 31. 66 Anita L. Vangelisti and John P. Caughlin, Revealing Family Secrets: The Influence of Topic, Function, and Relationships, Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 14 (1997): 679-80. 67 Mel Roman and Sara Blackburn, The Family Secret in Family Secrets: The Experience of Emotional Crisis (New York: Times Books, 1979), 137. 13
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accompany them on visits to him in the hospital. One day she inexplicably began acting violently. Arrangements were made for her to talk to a psychiatrist. She revealed to the psychiatrist her secret that she knew her brother was dying but she couldnt tell her mother because that would make her sad. The girl asked the psychiatrist to talk to her parents. After this her parents told her that they knew about her secret, and once this was out in the open the girl was able to ask her parents all kinds of questions which had been troubling her about what would happen to her brother after he died, did he get sick because of something bad she did, would she get leukemia too? Her erratic behavior disappeared and her parents were relieved to feel close to her again.68 Norman Paul recounts a case of a schizophrenic whose entire life had been plagued by an unimagined secret (the fact that he was conceived out of wedlock and his mother resented him for being the cause of her having to marry his father). Once this secret came out in therapy, the relationship between the patient and his mother began to improve and he was able to move out on his own.69

Drawbacks of Disclosure While exposing secrets can certainly bring relief from shame and improve family relationships, there is great risk involved. Disclosing secrets opens up the possibility of eroding trust in relationships, and feelings of anger, sadness, disappointment, and pain.70 When the truth is revealed in an insensitive and impulsive way without any follow-up to help the family assimilate the new information, it can have devastating results. Papp cites an example of a wife who, during a tell all session at a marriage encounter retreat, told her husband of a brief affair shed had years earlier. In the weeks following this disclosure, the husbands anger grew to an obsession. When the parents later brought their adolescent daughter in for therapy regarding anorexia, it became evident that her eating disorder was a response to her fathers intrusive concerns about her budding sexuality. He feared that she would follow in her mothers footsteps and become sexually promiscuous. Once the therapy turned to resolving the emotions surrounding the reckless disclosure of infidelity, the marriage was strengthened and the daughters symptoms disappeared.71

Pincus and Dare, 141-2. Norman L. Paul, The Role of a Secret in Schizophrenia in Family Therapy in Transition, ed. Nathan W. Ackerman (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1970), 245. 70 Mason, 42. 71 Papp, 83-4. 14
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Discussing family issues openly can also lead to more intense emotional fusion.72 Families also sometimes retaliate against members who reveal secrets to outsiders without the familys consent. Much harm can come from disclosing someones secret without their permission, as in the case of outing (revealing a persons sexual orientation publicly against their will) in the gay subculture. Karpel suggests that when deciding whether to disclose a secret or not, the secret-holder should consider the relevance of the matter to the unaware and the possible consequence of such disclosure, as well as being sensitive to appropriate timing. For example one would not want to reveal a painful secret to someone when they were in the midst of dealing with some other trauma. Karpel cautions against the two extremes of cavalier deception and compulsive honesty. The middle ground he calls accountability with discretion.73 In the case of an extramarital affair, it can be argued that the children should not be told as long as the parents are able to deal with the crisis swiftly and it does not affect their relationships with the children. However if there is unexplainable tension in the family or the children witness mysterious events, it is better to be open about what has happened. Otherwise the children will form their own private explanations and blame themselves for their parents anxiety.74

Family Secrets and Therapy Family therapy developed in the 1960s, and with it came a change in the therapeutic relationship. In the psychoanalytic model, the patient was to entrust the therapist with all his confidential thoughts, but the family was never involved. With the advent of family therapy came greater exposure of family secrets. Some early family therapists refused to meet with the family if any members were absent. Others worked with the family in their home, which made it harder for skeletons to be kept in the closet.75 Imber-Black suspects the existence of secrets whenever therapy sessions are marked by repeating uncomfortable silences, faltering conversation, veneers of politeness, sudden changes of the subject, constant eye contact between two family members whenever a particular topic is broached, or distracting and nonsensical conflicts.76

Bowen, 138. Karpel, 298. 74 Papp, 67. 75 Grolnick, 286. 76 Imber-Black (1998), 28.
72 73

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Therapy creates an atmosphere of privacy which can enable a person to reveal a painful secret.77 But family secrets can render a therapist ineffective in two ways. The therapist may be viewed as an outsider and not invited into the shared family secrets. Or an individual family member might create a new triangle by sharing a secret in confidence with the therapist and asking him or her not to tell the rest of the family.78 This creates complex problems and can result in an impasse in the therapy. A therapist is ethically obligated not to respect confidences such as these when they involve present danger to a family member, such as in the case of abuse. There are various approaches to secrets among therapists. Some consider secrets as symptoms of pathogenic families where family alliances and splits are the chief problems. They do not allow clients to share things privately in confidence with them unless they can be told to the other family members. Others view the relationship of trust between the therapist and the client as the key to effective treatment, so they allow and even encourage clients to bring them in on secrets which are not open to the whole family. There are clinicians who keep an open stance about accepting individual secrets but then they attempt to get that family member to disclose the secret to the family or to give the therapist permission to do so, working on unresolved issues with that client which may be hindering the uncovering of the secret. Finally, many therapists consider secrets on a case by case basis, and decide what to do based on the content of the secret.79 Selvini suggests the following criteria to use in determining whether or not a therapist should reveal an individual or internal secret to the rest of the family: 1) Who is the subject of the secret? The patient (symptomatic person), a parent, both parents, an extended family member? The farther away the subject of the secret is from the patient himself, the less imperative it is that the secret be revealed. 2) Is there a direct correlation between the secret and the patients symptoms? If not, it is not necessarily beneficial to reveal the secret. 3) Will the family be able to integrate and reflect on the secret if it is revealed? If not, it may do no good to reveal the secret.80 The therapist must resist the temptation to help unburden the family of its secret before they are ready. It is best to start with smaller, less threatening revelations first. One of the reasons families hold onto their secrets is a fear of dissolution of their relationships. The therapist should take this into consideration, Imber-Black (1993), 19. Imber-Black (1993), 10. 79 Cristy, 41-2. 80 Selvini, 315.
77 78

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though he or she might disagree that the only way to protect the relationships is through secrecy.81 A therapist who unveils a family secret must be willing to stay with the family to see the therapeutic process to its natural conclusion. It is not wise to reveal a secret impulsively or while the therapists rapport with the family is tenuous. Given the extreme emotional burden of the kind of secrets which tend to cause problems in the family, it is better for disclosure to occur in a therapy session where the reactions of family members can be monitored.82 Adams believes that it is not important for the therapist to pursue disclosure of family secrets; that he or she can ask questions around the secret to find out how the secret affects relationships in the family.83 Adams also describes a strategy of introducing secrets into the system as a therapeutic technique for realigning boundaries and strengthening subsystems in the family. In the case he relates, the therapist assigns to various dyads in the family (father-son, parents, mother-grandmother) the task of choosing some activity to do together and keep it secret from the rest of the family. The therapist also has the son (who was the identified problem) think of a secret that he can keep to himself. The prescribed secrets helped improve the familys relationships and eliminate the sons behavior problems. This strategy underlines Adams belief that too little secrecy in a family can cause just as many boundary problems as too much secrecy.84

A Biblical/Theological Reflection on Family Secrets There are many examples of family secrets in the narratives of Scripture. The first attempted secret is Adam and Eves sin in the garden. Henceforward, family relationships are marred, and the pattern of secrecy repeats itself from generation to generation. Cain murders his brother and tries to keep it an individual secret (but there is really no such thing in biblical stories since God sees through them in his omniscience). Abraham keeps his marriage to Sarah a secret from Abimelech in order to protect her (so he thinks). This same deception reappears in the next generation with Isaac and Rebekah. Rebekah and Jacob become parties to an internal secret which they keep from Isaac and Esau (their collusion to deceive Isaac). This particularly insidious secret crosses generational lines and creates an unhealthy boundary between the brothers. The breach in their relationship carries forward to their descendants, leading to enmity between Israel and Edom. Avery, 485. Selvini, 333. 83 Jerome F. Adams, The Utilization of Family Secrets as Constructive Resources in Strategic Therapy, Journal of Family Psychotherapy 4, no. 2 (1993), 21. 84 Adams, 32. 17
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The keeping of evil secrets from and between family members is depicted as sinful and a result of the Fall. It nearly always has negative consequences for the persons involved. On the other hand, there are some ways in which secrets can bring families closer. Although Joseph is the subject of a sinister family secret when his brothers lie to their father about his demise, disclosure of this secret comes, ironically, by means of a positive secret. In Egypt, Joseph keeps the secret of his identity temporarily from his brothers for the purpose of healing family relationships. In at least one other case, a family secret is meant for good from the beginning. Following Mordecais instruction, Esther kept the secret of her family background and nationality (Est 2:20), resulting in the protection of all the Jews. Sometimes harmful family secrets are disclosed prophetically. Davids secret of adultery with Bathsheba is unveiled by Nathan. Jesus sees right through the family secrets of the woman at the well, that she has been divorced five times and is living with a man now who is not her husband. Ananias and Sapphira have a shared financial secret which they try to keep from the apostles, to no avail. God knows the secrets of the human heart (Ps 44:21), and the secrets of the sinners heart will be laid bare (1 Cor 14:25). At other times a person reveals what would normally have been a family secret in that society (due to the stigmatization of various illnesses), in order to get help. Lepers and paralytics came to Jesus to be healed. A man with a demon-possessed son told Jesus about it and begged for deliverance. On the other hand, reckless disclosure of family secrets is frowned on in Scripture. Ham reveals the secret of his fathers nakedness to his brothers and is cursed for it. God expected Samson to keep secret the fact that the source of his strength was his hair. He carelessly confided his secret to Delilah, who proved not to be trustworthy. Not only did Samson give up his secret, but he ended up losing his strength and his life. There are times when keeping a secret is the right thing to do, to protect someone from shame or to prevent others from taking advantage of a family member. Proverbs 11:13 says, A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps a secret. God also has secrets which his children do not know, including the days ordained for us (Ps 139:16), and the day and hour when Christ will return (Matt 24:36). Job recognizes that God keeps his wisdom secret from every living thing (28:21; cf. 1 Cor 2:7). But those things which concern us and which teach us how to build and maintain intimacy with him, God reveals to us through his Word. The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the

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words of this law. (Deut 29:29) According to Tournier, the third step in the development of a person is to experience a relationship with God, to tell him our secret.85 There is evidence in Scripture of some of the harmful effects of keeping individual secrets. The woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years was living such a life of secrecy that she was even ashamed to have Jesus know she touched his cloak. Holding onto a secret alone can be an enormous burden, but it is particularly oppressive when it involves ones own sin. David was troubled in soul when he was keeping his transgressions to himself, but when he confessed to God, his peace was restored (Ps 32:3-5; 38:17-18). James is aware of the fact that the burden of secret sins can even cause physical symptoms, and calls for believers to confess to one another for healing (Jas 5:13-16). The church, recognizing the benefit of disclosing personal secrets, has institutionalized the practice of confession over the centuries. Disclosing secrets in therapy is really just a modern form of confession to deal with the anguish of private guilt. Sometimes a family secret too threatening to reveal at home can be shared to a priest or minister. This can even serve as a rehearsal for telling it to family members. When the keeping of secrets is causing dysfunction in the family, physical illness or strained relationships, confession can be a powerful remedy. We have seen that biblical and clinical evidence show that secret shame and topics that cannot be talked about can cause severe problems for individuals and relationships in a family. Opening up of family secrets can bring healing and intimacy, but it must be done with caution and proper timing. Family therapy can aid in the process, but care must be taken not to propagate the triangles of secrecy into the therapeutic relationship. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are even if we tell it only to ourselves because otherwise we...little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing....It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about. Finally, I suspect that it is by entering that deep place inside us where our secrets are kept that we come perhaps closer than we do anywhere else to the One who, whether we realize it or not, is of all our secrets the most telling and the most precious we have to tell. Frederick Buechner86

85 86

Tournier, 61. Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 3. 19

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Jerome F. The Utilization of Family Secrets as Constructive Resources in Strategic Therapy. Journal of Family Psychotherapy 4, no. 2 (1993): 19-33. Deals with the judicious introduction of secrets to improve relationships in therapy. Avery, Nicholas C. Family Secrets. Psychoanalytic Review 69 (1982): 471-86. More of a psychoanalytic approach than family systems. Not surprising given what journal its in. Bowen, Murray. Toward the Differentiation of a Self in Ones Own Family. Published anonymously in Family Interaction: A Dialogue Between Family Researchers and Family Therapists, ed. James L. Framo, 111-73. New York: Springer, 1972. Bowens classic article describing his experiment on differentiating himself from his family. Brown-Smith, Naima. Family Secrets. Journal of Family Issues 19, no. 1 (1998): 20-42. A basic summary of the literature to date. Fairly comprehensive. Buechner, Frederick. Telling Secrets. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. A beautiful memoir about how telling our secrets helps us connect with who we are and with God. Cottle, Thomas J. Childrens Secrets. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press / Doubleday, 1980. Mostly case histories of various kinds of secrets that children have to keep and how it affects them. Cristy, Barbara. Family Secrets in Family Therapy: An Ethical Dilemma. Social Thought 8, no. 3 (1982): 38-51. Deals with the ethics of whether a therapist should accept confidences and when to reveal them. Galvin, Kathleen M. & Bernard J. Brommel. Family Communication: Cohesion and Change. New York: HarperCollins, 1991. Basic background on family communication theory. Grolnick, Lawrence. Ibsens Truth, Family Secrets, and Family Therapy. Family Process 22 (1983): 275-88. Discusses aspects of family secrets through examining examples in Ibsens plays. Hartman, Ann. Secrecy in Adoption in Secrets in Families and Family Therapy, ed. Evan Imber-Black, 86-105. New York: Norton, 1993. Imber-Black, Evan. The Secret Life of Families. New York: Bantam, 1998. A very readable text for the lay person by the primary expert in family secrets. Imber-Black, Evan, ed. Secrets in Families and Family Therapy. New York: Norton, 1993. The best scholarly text on family secrets and therapy to date. Jacobs, Theodore J. Secrets, Alliances, and Family Fictions: Some Psychoanalytic Observations. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 28 (1980): 21-42. A study of family myths and how they arise from individual fantasies when secrets are present. Karpel, Mark A. Family Secrets. Family Process 19 (1980): 295-306. The seminal article which basically defined the language for talking about family secrets. Lane, Julie D. & Daniel M. Wegner. The Cognitive Consequences of Secrecy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69 (1995): 237-253. Report on some experiments that showed how the act of keeping a secret can affect ones thought processes. Mason, Marilyn. Shame: Reservoir for Family Secrets in Secrets in Families and Family Therapy, ed. Evan Imber-Black, 29-43. New York: Norton, 1993. 20

Paul, Norman L. The Role of a Secret in Schizophrenia in Family Therapy in Transition, ed. Nathan W. Ackerman, 223-248. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1970. A case history of a client with schizophrenia and his relationship with his mother, mired in secrecy. Papp, Peggy. The Worm in the Bud: Secrets Between Parents and Children in Secrets in Families and Family Therapy, ed. Evan Imber-Black, 66-85. New York: Norton, 1993. Pincus, Lily & Christopher Dare. Secrets in the Family. London: Faber & Faber, 1978. Talks about secrets at the various stages in the lifecycle of a family, from marriage to death of a spouse. Richardson, Ronald W. Family Ties that Bind. North Vancouver, BC: Self-Counsel Press, 1995. A self-help book on family of origin therapy. Roman, Mel & Sara Blackburn. The Family Secret in Family Secrets: The Experience of Emotional Crisis. New York: Times Books, 1979. The book is poorly titled. It has very little to do with family secrets. Selvini, Matteo. Family Secrets: The Case of the Patient Kept in the Dark. Contemporary Family Therapy 19 (1997): 315-35. Selvini studied the effect of family secrecy on the development of schizophrenia and other psychological disorders. Tournier, Paul. Secrets. London: SCM Press, 1965. Great little book on the benefits of keeping and discretionary telling of secrets in developing personhood. Vangelisti, Anita L. Family Secrets: Forms, Functions and Correlates. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 11 (1994): 113-35. Report on experiments that determined relationships between form (which members of the family are in on the secret), topic (what is the secret about), and function (why is the secret being kept) of family secrets. Vangelisti, Anita L. & John P. Caughlin. Revealing Family Secrets: The Influence of Topic, Function, and Relationships. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 14 (1997): 679-705. Report on experiments that determined influence of topic and function on likelihood of revelation of family secrets. Warren, Carol & Barbara Laslett. Privacy and Secrecy: A Conceptual Comparison. Journal of Social Issues 33, no. 3 (1977): 43-51. A comparison between privacy and secrecy.

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