I do not wish, however, to convey the impression that families act like governments. As you all know, there has been much analogizing of family process to what goes on in politics. It is rather governments that act like families, for where else did the human race learn to function like that?
This essay is divided into three major sections. Section I will discuss some effects of secrets on the emotional process of a family. Section II will, through specific examples, discuss some effects on families of revealing secrets. And Section III will add some thoughts about the ethics of not being “dependable” about keeping secrets.
I
I should like to begin with a short typology of family secrets.
Family member A gives information to member B and asks him not to tell members C–Z. For example, a son might tell his mother that he was arrested and ask her not to tell Dad.
A family, without making any conscious effort, has conspired to keep information closeted, such as the fact that grandma died by committing suicide and no one talks about it.
A third type of family secret, which is less obvious than the second, is one in which opinions or perceptions are accepted at face value and not checked out. For example, Dad tells his daughter how upset her mother is at the news she is getting married, and the daughter accepts this without ever speaking with Mom.
Finally, there is the secret that might be classified as the “unmentionable subject,” such as the death of a six-year-old child twenty years ago, which is never discussed by the family
In all four cases, whether or not the information was intentionally kept secret or intentionally used to create binds, the effects on the family relationship system will be the same.
What are some of those effects? Here are the five that I believe to be most significant:
1 Distortion of perceptions and information, at the fact-gathering level.
2 Creation of pseudo-bonds and unnecessary estrangements.
3 Stabilizing of triangles and support for pathological family processes.
4 Dilution of family strengths.
5 Maintenance of anxiety at higher energy levels.
Effect 1. Distortion of Perceptions
This is one of the most elementary, far-reaching, and subtle effects of secrets on families. I start with this one because, after all, one’s impressions, one’s feelings, one’s thoughts, one’s behavior, one’s theorizing is all based on the information one has obtained. To the extent that information itself is incorrect, one is dealing with what might be called secondary family process. By secondary family process I do not mean anything pseudo. Those feelings and behaviors are real and are having a real effect on the family members; but if they are based on misperceptions of reality seen dimly through a screen of obfuscation or outright lies, then root causes still in operation on a primary level may sabotage all efforts to get change in that secondary process level, making them always only temporary changes.
Whether one belongs to that part of the family that is in on or out of the secret, the basis of information upon which to act will be continually distorted by the continuing growth of assumptions that have emotionally committed themselves in a particular bias. Thus, on the one hand, secrets help maintain illusions; on the other hand, they prevent the admission of evidence contrary to one’s fixed perception that might in a more open emotional climate change that very perception.
Effect 2. Creation of Alliances and Estrangements
Family secrets create alliances that produce bonds and binds as well as unnecessary estrangements. Effect #2 is, of course, a natural result of effect #1, the distortion of perceptions, but its manifestations are so strong and influential in their own right, they seem to deserve special mention. Clearly, how one perceives someone affects the kind of relationship one desires to have with him. But the secondary effects are extremely significant. There are children who never get to know their cousins, or divorced parents no longer living with them, or parents still living with them, because they have bought the perceptions of their parents or other emotionally significant members of the family. On the other hand, there are an enormous number of family relationships that maintain the strength they have only because a third member of the family has been distanced, triangled out, through secrets passed back and forth between those in the strong bond. This is obvious, for example, between mother and son when father is out of the information. Less obvious are the marriages maintained by creating an enemy in one of the in-laws. This happens of course when one spouse accepts as fact the opinions of the other spouse about his or her parents and never seeks to establish the kind of direct relationships that might produce contrary information. The couple, in other words, share a secret.
Effect 3. Stabilizing of Triangles
This a corollary of 1 and 2, or perhaps just a way of putting the first two more simply. Secrets in family life create triangles and help them to function. Secrecy in a family may be one of the most important internal forces in helping triangles to stabilize. Thus it may be said, family secrets always support the homeostasis of the family emotional system because openness and questions are inherently subversive. In fact, it may be a good rule of thumb that if you are on the side of change, then secrets work against you.1
Effect 4. Dilution of Strengths
Secrets in a family keep the family from functioning as an organized community. Family secrets seem to have an avalanche effect, dividing the community into parts and making it difficult for those on either side of the secret to communicate. And the important point here is that the difficulty in communication seems to spread out into all areas way beyond the subject of the original secret. In short, secrets in a family make it more difficult for that family to mobilize its natural strengths. For example, I once had to visit four sisters in the hospital after a severe automobile accident. Their kid brother had died, but the doctors did not want the sisters to know until they had recuperated more fully. I found myself unable to carry on any meaningful conversation, no less be of real comfort, as I had to be so careful about telling them the truth that I had to “prethink” everything I was going to say to make sure it would not lead to some subject that might prompt them to ask a question about their brother.
Effect 5. High Anxiety
Secrecy in a family helps maintain anxiety at higher energy levels. This logically follows from the other four effects on communication, triangles, and perceptions. But two additional phenomena might be mentioned specifically here regarding trauma and diagnosis. I believe when a member of a family has gone or is going through a particularly disturbing emotional experience, the effects of the trauma will be prolonged and preserved by efforts of other family members who are aware of it and strive to keep it secret. When it is a child, secrecy surrounding the experience may itself make the experience traumatic. Regarding diagnosis, when members of a family receive a diagnosis about another member, whether it is a diagnosis regarding physical illness (say in a spouse or an elderly parent) or emotional difficulty (say a professional report about a child), keeping the information from that person will help fix a particular focus on that person and in turn will help maintain a higher energy level of anxiety about that person’s condition and what they must be going through. I used to think people did not tell others bad news in order to spare their feelings; now I believe it is so they won’t have to deal with their own feelings.
Actually, one of the keys to understanding how well the members of any family are able to differentiate themselves from one another may be the extent to which secrecy is used as a method for dealing with anxiety. I have been struck, for example, by the number of people I see where the impending death of a parent or other important person was kept from them, making me wonder to what extent that secrecy helped produce the problem they are now dealing with and