Structuring and destabilising secrets
“Secrets become pathological when we cease to be their guardians and become their prisoners.” Serge Tisseron
We all have secrets. They are part of the social mask that Carl Gustav Jung called Persona (a mask worn by actors in Greek theatre), to designate the adaptation system through which we communicate with the outside world. It is the role we assume in social relationships to hide (…) the face we never show to the world, because we hide it with the help of Persona, the actor’s mask.
To the extent that we identify completely with this external attitude, the individual can deceive not only others about their true character, but also themselves. They assume a mask that they know corresponds, on the one hand, to their intentions and, on the other, to the demands and expectations of their environment. Jung called this mask — or assumed attitude — Persona.
Like the mask, secrets protect our intimacy from the prying eyes of others.
According to Serge Tisseron, the moment when a child begins to lie to their parents is crucial for their psychological development. It is at this moment that a personal space is formed, allowing them to differentiate themselves and break out of symbiosis.
Some secrets are useful for an individual’s development — they are structuring — such as, for example, the secret about their parents’ sexuality.
The right to secrecy, for both adults and children, is essential because it protects intimacy and is the first condition for thinking for oneself and by oneself. Totalitarian
regimes have as a common characteristic the attempt to control the private lives of individuals and abolish the protective barrier of individual secrecy.
(Serge Tisseron, quoted by Marie Anaut in “Soigner la famille”, p. 162)
Family secrets are also powerful stimuli for creativity: children investigate, question and thus develop their cognitive abilities.
Freud, in studying Leonardo da Vinci’s childhood, observed that family secrets arouse intellectual curiosity.
Marie Anaut, a French clinical psychologist and systemic therapist, states: “Most geniuses have navigated the maze of questions left by gaps in their family tree, but they have also experienced the intensity of stories marked by abandonment and recognition.”
According to Anaut, discovering a secret is not automatically liberating. Only the work of elaboration — understanding the meaning of the secret, its function in the family, and its value to those who created it — can help overcome the negative effects of the unsaid.
Some secrets have a protective function: they act as shields that prevent even greater pain, often hiding another, even more painful secret.
When the secret is linked to unspeakable pain or the repression of trauma, it can become a psychic ghost that haunts descendants for generations — as Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok demonstrated in “The Shell and the Kernel.“
Secrets become pathological when they intensely interfere with family communication, creating areas of shadow and disturbing silences — as shown in the clinical cases of Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy in the book Invisible Loyalties, written with Geraldine Spark.
Even when created to protect others from pain or shame, secrets prevent any dialogue related to the hidden topic. Even talking about events vaguely related to the subject becomes impossible.
Not every secret is pathological.
Its impact depends on the nature of the secret and the degree of relational stagnation it causes.
Marie Anaut points out that family secrets can hinder a child’s psychological development, causing behavioural disorders and personality formation issues.
The contradictory messages characteristic of secrets — saying and not saying, whispering among adults, changing the subject when the child approaches — create paradoxical communication: the child senses something, but cannot speak.
She speaks of the “porosity of the secret”: in her clinical practice, she has witnessed parents openly discussing the content of the secret in front of their young children, saying that “when he is older, we will tell him the truth” — as if the child were not already sensing the pain present.
Françoise Dolto stated that it takes three generations of non-communication to create a psychotic child.
“Every family secret, however well-intentioned, is always experienced as violence by the child. Violence that they will never forget and that will deeply mark their psychic life — and, consequently, their love life, professional life, and social life.”
When the keeper of the secret cannot talk about it, it is because it serves as an emotional barrier against unbearable suffering.
This is the case with soldiers who have returned from war or Holocaust survivors: they avoid recounting their traumatic experiences to protect themselves from the horror they have experienced and to protect others from the suffering of hearing about it.
But silence leads to psychological dissociation: on the one hand, the memory is rationally erased; on the other, the pain remains alive and influences the present.
Guy Ausloos, a Belgian psychiatrist, describes the paradox: “It is forbidden to know, but it is also forbidden to forget.”
In his research with families of young delinquents and drug addicts, he observed that 72% contained transgenerational secrets, and 52% intergenerational secrets.
According to him, the “delinquent act” of some adolescents is a symbolic re-enactment of the unspoken family secret, an unconscious attempt to reveal it in a coded form — and therefore incomprehensible.
Anne Ancelin Schützenberger said that the secrets we most often encounter are the same: theft, incest, psychiatric or prison admissions, bankruptcies, children born out of wedlock, sexual abuse, homicides, or descent from criminals. She calls them “Polichinelo secrets” because everyone knows about them, but no one talks about them. All you have to do is ask the right questions for the secret to come to light.
But this is especially true for intergenerational secrets. When the secret is older, it becomes transgenerational, and everything becomes more complicated.
Families are systems with their own laws, as Nagy observes: loyalty to the family comes before social morality.
For example, in a family where theft is accepted, illicit enrichment may not be a secret — perhaps even a source of pride. The secret, therefore, is relativised by family culture.
Another important point is that some secrets cease to be considered shameful over time. Being homosexual, for example, was taboo for a long time. Today, in many contexts, it is accepted.
“I used to be Jewish and persecuted. Today I am still Jewish, but I am viewed with interest and empathy. It wasn’t me who changed, it was the way others saw me.”
— Boris Cyrulnik
Marie Anaut proposes four categories of secrets:
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About origins and parentage: illegitimate children, undisclosed adoptions, incest, abortions, hidden marriages.
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Due to social shame: mental illness, homosexuality, bankruptcy, alcoholism, drugs, imprisonment, prostitution.
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About death: suicide, murder, wars, infanticide.
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About sexual violence: abuse, incest, rape.
How to identify the existence of a family secret?
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When there are gaps in the family story.
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When certain characters disappear from the story.
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When parents, grandparents or uncles change the subject when asked certain questions.
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When there are inexplicable feelings of confusion, shame or guilt.
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When the child invents a story to fill in the gaps.
Dolto said:
“Children always intuit their history. When the truth is told, they construct it.”
Repetitions of patterns across several generations also signal transgenerational secrets. The family unconscious manifests itself through symptoms, patterns or repetitions.
On the transmission of secrets:
“For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of their parents to the third and fourth generation.”
— Exodus 20:5
Secrets can turn into psychological trauma over generations if they are not processed. Grief, for example, can only be overcome by fully experiencing the pain, never by denial or avoidance.
According to Boris Cyrulnik, “those who fully experience grief expand their inner space and rediscover their capacity to love and live.”
When suffering is repressed, a psychological split occurs: one rational part denies it; another part suffers. This generates symptoms, phobias, blockages and can affect fertility, health and transmission between generations.
Tisseron suggests that after three generations, the secret disappears. But the author of the text proposes that, instead, it changes form and continues, as children from families with secrets tend to create new ones out of unconscious loyalty.