Secrecy and Privacy

“Love ceases to be a pleasure when it ceases to be a secret.” - Aphra Behn

We often label secrets as harmful, guilt ridden, shame ridden concepts that are self-destructive. But what if, like everything else, there are some hidden positive payoffs that we have failed to recognize? Are secrets all bad or are there exceptions? Is there a continuum on which secrets reside? Can secrets be self-serving and perhaps valuable?

Excitement and Secrecy

The “best kept secret” is believed to represent a secret and safe place from all prying. There is a certain amount of excitement and pleasure derived from knowing something that others do not.

As a child you may have had a secret hiding place when playing “hide-and-seek”. It could be the best restaurant you discovered in a little hideaway street in a foreign country. Or, it could be a favourite recipe that no one else knows. Maybe even a great surprise that you discovered while travelling that you want to keep to yourself. All these secrets are about the excitement of possessing something that others do not. There is a private ownership.

Even the marital affair may have somewhat of an attraction, at least at first, in knowing that this exciting and illicit activity is unknown to one’s partner. There is a certain amount of freedom in having these secret experiences with the knowledge that others are not privy to your activities, which literally means not let in on your secret.

Remember the excitement of knowing something nobody else knows? You have some good news that is a secret and you can hold onto it and reveal that information when and if you choose. That can be very exciting!

Privacy and Secrecy

“Privacy and secrecy are coexisting and symbiotic enactments of the impulse to control the knowledge or behaviours of other people; both terms gain meaning in relation to permitting or restricting other people's awareness or observations. “(1)

Controlling the knowledge of others through secrecy has always been connected to privacy. Secrecy is sometimes labelled intentional hiding of information and privacy as being more about a protection of one’s personal boundaries. However, the line between these two terms can be blurred.

The saying “what they don’t know won’t hurt them” is an example of the overlapping nature of privacy and secrecy. Or another expression is “it’s nobody’s business but mine.” Are these statements about privacy or secrecy? It really depends upon the motivation of the person making these statements. The need for personal protection could be served by either privacy or secrecy.

The power of holding a secret comes from a knowledge or awareness that you possess what others do not. On the stock market this would be illegal since it would be regarded as insider trader information, which gives a powerful advantage to the investor having this information that others do not possess.

Holding on to secret information may also delineate a sense of power (2). There is at least a perceived advantage in knowing that I know what others do not know.

Secrecy and Growth

In Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933), the psychoanalyst Carl Jung warned that secrets ‘act like a psychic poison that alienates their possessor from the community’. In therapy, we know that hanging on to the secrets of abuse and trauma have an insidious impact over time. Letting go of these secrets in a safe environment is part of the healing process.

At the same time, Jung recognised that holding secrets is part of the process of individuation: “In small doses this poison may be a priceless remedy, even an essential preliminary to the differentiation of the individual. This is so much the case that, even on a primitive level, man has felt an irresistible need to invent secrets; their possession saves him from dissolving in the unconsciousness of mere community life, and thus from a fatal psychic injury.” (3)

When we consider how much of our early childhood development is intertwined with secrecy, this individuation process seems apropos. So many childhood games are about keeping or holding secrets. Games like “Truth or Dare” hold secrets that when unravelled solve the mystery between lies and truth. Later as adults we are still attracted to unveiling the secrets of mystery through the works of writers like Agatha Christie or Patricia Cornwell.

Child Development Essential Reads

Water the Garden, Don't Mold the Clay: Childhood Is Not a Race

Beyond the Marshmallow Test: Rethinking Delayed Gratification

Resolving secrecy in games and literature expands our minds to new awarenesses and discoveries. At times, revealing the unknown secrets in our personal lives can be even more rewarding than hiding them. We may even divest our best kept secrets.