Secrecy is as indispensible to human beings as fire, and as greatly feared. Both enhance and protect life, yet both can stifle, lay waste, spread out of all control. Both can be used to guard intimacy or to invade it, to nurture or to consume. And each can be turned against itself: barriers of secrecy are set up to guard against secret plots and surreptitious prying, just as fire is used to fight fire. – Sisela Bok
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable, but there it sits, calmly licking its’ chops. – H.L. Mencken
Secrets in the Therapeutic Context
“I know they know, because my sisters know and their grown children know. I can’t tell you how many times we’ve sat together with our sons and daughters, looking at their wedding pictures and never have they asked to see ours, not one of them!” These words of Carol Littleton (All names and identifying information have been changed.), reflecting on the aching half century secret that her two oldest children were...
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Imber-Black, E. (2018). Family Secrets. In: Lebow, J., Chambers, A., Breunlin, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Couple and Family Therapy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15877-8_838-1
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