Characteristics of secrets and the frequency,reasons and effects of secrets keeping and disclosure

This longitudinal study examines secrets keeping and disclosure. College students filled in two questionnaires, with a 4 months time span in between. Their psychological and physical wellbeing was investigated, together with self‐esteem, the topic and some characteristics of their most important secret (if they had a secret), reasons for having the secret, to whom they confide the secret, how they felt about confiding, and whether they thought that their behaviour would reveal that they kept a secret when they talked with someone who is not aware of their secret. The findings showed that total secrecy was rare, and that most secret‐holders had informed at least one other person about their secret. Moreover, the findings challenge the view that secrets keeping has negative effects on secret‐holders. Results revealed some negative effects, but only when the secret was serious. No positive effects were found for secrets disclosure. Secret‐holders confided information to those with whom they felt emotionally close; were more reluctant to confide when they kept the secret to avoid disapproval, and more likely to confide when they believed that others would find out about their secrets by paying attention to their (secret‐holders) behaviour. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

I Can't Get You Out of My Head: The Influence of Secrecy on Consumers’ Self‐Brand Connections

Although research provides anecdotal evidence of consumers keeping their brand consumption a secret, there is little empirical corroboration to justify its study or illuminate the resulting consequences. The goals of this research are to provide evidence for the prevalence of keeping brand consumption a secret and to understand the resulting cognitive processing and consequences. Specifically, we first explore the occurrence of secrecy in the context of brand consumption, its types, and its motivations, underscoring the need for further investigation. Then, through a series of three subsequent studies, we demonstrate that keeping brand consumption a secret can lead to enhanced self‐brand connections through the underlying processes of thought suppression and thought intrusion. We rule out alternative explanations and enhance generalizability through the examination of passive (e.g., avoiding) versus active (e.g., lying) secrecy and variations in agency (i.e., instructed vs. voluntary secrecy).     

Memoirs of a drug-abusing prostitute: Dynamics and treatment considerations in a case of intergenerational child abuse

This paper examines the dynamics of a 26-year-old prostitute who entered psychotherapy with a number of symptoms. The patient had undergone a series of traumas in her life and was reenacting them in her present behavior. Repetition compulsion, as described by Freud, was a primary form of resistance manifested by this patient. The repetition of the sexual trauma reenacted itself in her choice of profession; namely, prostitution. Additionally, this woman had lived her early years falsely believing that her parents were caring for her, when in fact, they were her grandparents. This early family secret led to the development of a false self within the patient, as well as a strong sense of entitlement, greed, and need for revenge.     

Associations of Mother–Child Reminiscing about Negative Past Events,Coping, and Self‐Concept in Early Childhood

Parent–child reminiscing conversations in early childhood have received theoretical attention as a forum for children's self‐concept development, but this has been little addressed in empirical work. This study examines associations between emotion reminiscing and children's self‐concepts and, building from the reminiscing and personality development literatures, also explores the role of children's coping. Sixty 4‐ and 5‐year‐old children and their mothers completed reminiscing conversations about events in which the child had experienced negative emotion, children completed an age‐appropriate assessment of their self‐concept, and mothers and teachers reported on children's coping strategies. Children's self‐perceived timidity was associated with their explanations for negative emotions during reminiscing. Children's self‐perceived negative affect was associated with fewer emotion resolutions during reminiscing, and with distinctive patterns of coping. Both reminiscing and coping made unique contributions to children's self‐concepts, and findings also suggest that coping may in some contexts indirectly connect reminiscing with self‐concept. These findings suggest that reminiscing conversations both reflect children's characteristics and provide a context for learning about their characteristics, along with strategies for emotion management. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The semantics of secrecy: young children's classification of secret content

The authors explored whether young children can distinguish potential secrets from nonsecrets by their content, as can older children, adolescents, and adults. Ninety children, 4, 5, and 6 years old, rated the secrecy of items from an adult-validated list of personal information about an age- and gender-appropriate puppet. Two factors of the children's data corresponded to the adult categories of nonsecrets and secrets, and a third factor corresponded to surprises. All ages rated surprises as significantly more secret than nonsecret items; however, the surprise items contained linguistic cues to secrecy. A tendency to rate nonsecrets as secret decreased with age, but only the 6-year-olds rated secrets other than surprises as significantly more secret than nonsecrets. Thus, children acquire the implicit rules defining secret content from a somewhat later age than that reported for the cognitive or behavioral capacities for secrecy.     

The Semantics of Secrecy: Young Children's Classification of Secret Content

The authors explored whether young children can distinguish potential secrets from nonsecrets by their content, as can older children, adolescents, and adults. Ninety children, 4, 5, and 6 years old, rated the secrecy of items from an adult-validated list of personal information about an age- and gender-appropriate puppet. Two factors of the children's data corresponded to the adult categories of nonsecrets and secrets, and a third factor corresponded to surprises. All ages rated surprises as significantly more secret than nonsecret items; however, the surprise items contained linguistic cues to secrecy. A tendency to rate nonsecrets as secret decreased with age, but only the 6-year-olds rated secrets other than surprises as significantly more secret than nonsecrets. Thus, children acquire the implicit rules defining secret content from a somewhat later age than that reported for the cognitive or behavioral capacities for secrecy.     

青少年自我同一性发展研究

本研究以小学至高中阶段的青少年为研究对象,使用自我同一性状态客观测量的标准化问卷,对青少年的自我同一性发展规律进行分析,研究结果发现,自我同一性的发展是一个逐渐变化的过程,其中,初中是一个很重要的阶段;同时,自我同一性的发展在不同领域问表现出发展不同步的现象,人际关系领域发展比意识形态领域较早;另外,自我同一性发展受地区、性别角色等因素影响。     

On the countertransference of the patient: Transformations of the psychoanalyst's 'theoretical self' and their possible articulations with the vicissitudes of the analytic relationship

In this paper the author examines one of the many levels of the analyst/analysand relationship: the possible interaction between the analyst's mental routes in relation to theories (also meant, but not only, as internal objects) and the vicissitudes of the psychoanalytic relationships with his patients. The author assumes that an important variable affecting the transformation of certain therapeutic relationships is the change that takes place in the relationship between the analyst and that part of his internal world where his theories find their place. He names this part of his internal world 'theoretical self', and 'precipitates of the analyst's theoretical self' those complex formations, akin to more or less cohesive conglomerates, that are formed by his relationship to theories and to psychoanalytic institutions, and by the various, 'personal' internalised objects. The psychoanalyst will relate to these precipitates in a variety of ways, and he will make use of them mostly at an unconscious level in his analytical work; and his patient is likely to 'react' to them, almost chemically. The author also offers some working indications: the psychoanalyst, despite his knowledge of some aspects of his own countertransference, is in fact lacking in knowledge, unless he constantly does some extra work focusing on how his mental position (i.e. the relationship with the precipitates of his theoretical self) may intervene in any of the therapeutic relationships that he establishes-not necessarily in the same way in each of them. The author also illustrates his reflections and conceptualisations by reporting dreams and excerpts from sessions taken from three psychoanalytic treatments in the course of several years.     

The adversity of secret relationships

Are secret romantic relationships alluring or aversive? Previous research suggests that romantic secrecy (i.e., keeping a romantic relationship secret from others) creates a cognitive preoccupation that enhances romantic attraction. In contrast, we predicted that romantic secrecy interferes with relationship interdependence and thereby decreases relationship quality. Three studies of secrecy in ongoing romantic relationships confirmed this prediction. In Study 1, romantic secrecy predicted lower levels of initial relationship quality and decreased relationship quality over a 2‐week period. In Study 2, relationship burden mediated partially the negative association between romantic secrecy and relationship quality. In Study 3, the negative association between romantic secrecy and relationship quality was primarily explained by decreased relationship satisfaction. The importance of understanding romantic secrecy is discussed.     

Time-Soaked: How Trauma Submerges In and Out of Time

This clinical presentation explores how we are submerged in time as patients and analysts, particularly when intergenerational traumas are present. The temporal dimension of this submerged time may involve an engulfing past that is heavy with destructiveness. This paper examines how a patient and analyst emerge from such a past. I suggest a patient may begin to feel a sense of “self in time” (Seligman, 2016) when a foundation for mutual recognition is established through implicit gestures and nonverbal interactions. Once this level of interaction becomes enlivened, time may begin as well as the process of becoming a self with an other.     

Social and emotional self‐efficacy at work

Research has shown that self‐efficacy is often one of the most important personal resources in the work context. However, because this research has focused on cognitive and task‐oriented self‐efficacy, little is known about social and emotional dimensions of self‐efficacy at work. The main aim of the present study was to investigate social and emotional self‐efficacy dimensions at work and to compare them to a cognitive and task‐oriented dimension. Scales to measure social and emotional self‐efficacy at work were developed and validated and found to be well differentiated from the cognitive task‐oriented occupational self‐efficacy scale. Confirmatory factor analyses of data from 226 Swedish and 591 German employees resulted in four separate but correlated self‐efficacy dimensions: (1) occupational; (2) social; (3) self‐oriented emotional; and (4) other‐oriented emotional. Social self‐efficacy explained additional variance in team climate and emotional self‐efficacy in emotional irritation and emotional exhaustion, over and above effects of occupational self‐efficacy. Men reported higher occupational self‐efficacy, whereas social and emotional self‐efficacy revealed no clear gender differences. The scales have strong psychometric properties in both Swedish and German language versions. The positive association between social self‐efficacy and team climate, and the negative relationships between self‐oriented emotional self‐efficacy and emotional irritation and emotional exhaustion may provide promising tools for practical applications in work settings such as team‐building, staff development, recruitment or other training programs aiming for work place health promotion. The next step will be to study how social and emotional self‐efficacy relate to leadership, well‐being and health over time.     

Employing autobiographical memory perspective to influence self‐congruence and brand preference

This paper advances our understanding of consumer behavior by examining the influence of autobiographical memory perspective on consumer's self‐congruence. While extant research has primarily restricted itself to the consequences of self‐congruence, this work focuses on an antecedent, by examining the psychological processes associated with the consumer's autobiographical memory perspective and the resulting impact on self‐congruence. Through three experiments, we demonstrate that visualizing autobiographical memories from a first‐person versus a third‐person perspective impacts consumers' self‐brand congruence differently under varied circumstances. Specifically, differing degrees of self‐brand congruence are experienced when consumers focus on differences (vs. similarities) between their present and recalled selves, combined with distinct autobiographical memory perspectives. The autobiographical memory perspective is identified as a key determinant of consumers' perceived change in self‐image, which, in turn, has a cascading effect on their self‐brand congruence. Thus, consumers' perceived change in self‐image is identified as the mechanism underlying the main effect. Furthermore, as an important component of self‐image, this research determines and examines a moderating influence of self‐esteem in the relationship between autobiographical memory perspective and self‐congruence. Collectively, these results facilitate our understanding of the autobiographical memory perspective as an antecedent of consumer's self‐congruence, with implications for nostalgia advertising and retro branding.     

Commentary on Three Articles on Self‐practice/Self‐reflection in Cognitive‐Behavioural Therapy

The commentary embraces three valuable contributions to the development of professional practice: (a) engagement with self‐practice/self‐reflection as a professional self‐development: the role of therapist beliefs; (b) spontaneous self‐practice of cognitive‐behavioural therapy (CBT) by aboriginal counsellors during and following CBT training: a retrospective analysis of the facilitating conditions and impact; (c) developing metacompetence in low intensity CBT interventions: evaluating a self‐practice/self‐reflection programme for experienced low intensity CBT practitioners. Each article provides different perspectives of the self‐practice and self‐reflection benefits for efficient therapy and their use as powerful resources in therapeutic training skills in general and CBT in particular. Conclusions of their contributions close the commentary.     

Dissociation,the true self and the notion of the frozen baby

Abstract

The widespread ‘trauma talk’ that is prevalent in the social sciences, has, in recent years, become increasingly commonplace in psychoanalytic writings, especially in attachment theory and relational psychoanalysis. This paper examines dissociation, a key concept in ‘trauma theory’, in conjunction with the Winnicottian term ‘true self’, in the context of a particular discursive and theoretical combination of the two. This discursive formation is named ‘the frozen baby discourse’, and it is presented and analysed. A critique is offered of the way ‘true self’, understood as a humanistic concept, is often used together with dissociation, in order to create a theoretical construct that is far removed from Winnicottian theory. This paper begins by exploring definitional issues, both around dissociation and ‘true self’. It is subsequently argued that this contemporary usage of ‘true self’ in combination with dissociation has important implications for psychoanalytic practice.     

Family Secrecy in Family Therapy Practice: An Explorative Focus Group Study

The aim of this focus group study was to explore the experiences of family therapists working with family secrecy. Our study highlights that family secrets present important and compelling challenges for family therapists. Furthermore, our study reveals that there seem to be some basic strategies family therapists use in dealing with these challenges in therapy sessions. One basic strategy is that family therapists try to guard their position of being a trustworthy therapist for each family member by avoiding becoming stuck in family secrecy. Furthermore, therapists explore ways to guide the family toward the disclosure of the secret in order to alleviate the toxicity of the secrecy. This highlights the importance of the systemic model and how influential this perspective is in family therapy practice. Some participants, however, have in addition a second strategy they sometimes use: talking with the family about secrecy without aiming to disclose the secret. In the discussion section of the article we reflect on the possibility that in the strategic choices family therapists make conceptual issues might be involved. Furthermore, we stress the importance of further research.     

Mentalization, insightfulness, and therapeutic action The importance of mental organization

Continuing debates over the relative importance of the role of interpretation leading to insight versus the relationship with the analyst as contributing to structural change are based on traditional defi nitions of insight as gaining knowledge of unconscious content. This defi nition inevitably privileges verbal interpretation as self‐knowledge becomes equated with understanding the contents of the mind. It is suggested that a way out of this debate is to redefi ne insight as a process, one that is called insightfulness. This term builds on concepts such as mentalization, or theory of mind, and suggests that patients present with diffi culties being able to fully mentalize. Awareness of repudiated content will usually accompany the attainment of insightfulness. But the point of insightfulness is to regain access to inhibited or repudiated mentalization, not to specifi c content, per se. Emphasizing the process of insightfulness integrates the importance of the relationship with the analyst with the facilitation of insightfulness. A variety of interventions help patients gain the capacity to refl ect upon and become aware of the intricate workings of their minds, of which verbal interpretation is only one. For example, often it seems less important to focus on a particular confl ict than to show interest in our patients’ minds. Furthermore, analysands develop insightfulness by becoming interested in and observing our minds in action. Because the mind originates in bodily experience, mental functioning will always fl uctuate between action modes of experiencing and expressing and verbal, symbolic modes. The analyst's role becomes making the patient aware of regressions to action modes, understanding the reasons for doing so, and subordinating this tendency to the verbal, symbolic mode. All mental functions work better and facilitate greater self‐regulation when they work in abstract, symbolic ways. Psychopathology can be understood as failing to develop or losing the symbolic level of organization, either in circumscribed areas or more ubiquitously. And mutative action occurs through helping our patients attain or regain the symbolic level in regard to all mental functions. Such work is best accomplished in the transference. The concept of transference of defense is expanded to all mental structure, so that transference is seen as the interpersonalization of mental structure. That is, patients transfer their mental structure, including their various levels of mentalizing, into the analytic interaction. The analyst observes all levels of the patient's mental functioning and intervenes to raise them to a symbolic one. At times, this will require action interpretations, allowing oneself to be pulled into an enactment with the patient that is then reprocessed at a verbal, symbolic level. Such actions are not corrective emotional experiences but are interpretations and confrontations of the patient's transferred mental organization at a level affectively and cognitively consistent with the level of communication. Nonetheless, the goal becomes raising the communication to a symbolic level as being able to refl ect symbolically on all aspects of one's mind with a minimum of restriction is the greatest guarantee of mental health.     

CONCEPTIONS OF SELF/NO-SELF AND MODES OF CONNECTION Comparative Soteriological Structures in Classical Chinese Thought

This essay examines the ways that the terms “self” and “no‐self” can illuminate the views of classical Chinese thinkers, particularly Confucians such as Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi, and the Daoist thinker Zhuangzi. In particular, the use of the term “no‐self ” to describe Zhuangzi's position is defended. The concepts of self and no‐self are analyzed in relation to other terms within the thinkers' “concept clusters”—specifically temporality, nature, and social roles—and suggestions are given for constructing typologies that sort out the range of meanings of self and no‐self based on the characteristics of the relations among terms within the concept clusters. The essay focuses on the way that the Confucians and Zhuangzi use concepts of self and no‐self, respectively, as soteriological strategies that aim at making connections with larger systems or wholes, and it concludes that different connections are emphasized by the Confucians and Zhuangzi precisely because the various connections are made possible and sustained by different conceptions of self, temporality, nature, and social roles.     

The Secrecy Heuristic: Inferring Quality from Secrecy in Foreign Policy Contexts

Three experiments demonstrate that in the context of U.S. foreign policy decision making, people infer informational quality from secrecy. In Experiment 1, people weighed secret information more heavily than public information when making recommendations about foreign political candidates. In Experiment 2, people judged information presented in documents ostensibly produced by the Department of State and the National Security Council as being of relatively higher quality when those documents were secret rather than public. Finally, in Experiment 3, people judged a National Security Council document as being of higher quality when presented as a secret document rather than a public document and evaluated others' decisions more favorably when those decisions were based on secret information. Discussion centers on the mediators, moderators, and broader implications of this secrecy heuristic in foreign policy contexts.     

Self‐analysis and the development of an interpretation

In spite of the fact that Freud's self‐analysis was at the centre of so many of his discoveries, self‐analysis remains a complex, controversial and elusive exercise. While self‐analysis is often seen as emerging at the end of an analysis and then used as a criteria in assessing the suitability for termination, I try to attend to the patient's resistance to self‐analysis throughout an analysis. I take the view that the development of the patient's capacity for self‐analysis within the analytic session contributes to the patient's growth and their creative and independent thinking during the analysis, which prepares him or her for a fuller life after the formal analysis ends. The model I will present is based on an over lapping of the patient's and the analyst's self‐analysis, with recognition and use of the analyst's counter‐transference. My focus is on the analyst's self‐analysis that is in response to a particular crisis of not knowing, which results in feeling intellectually and emotionally stuck. This paper is not a case study, but a brief look at the process I went through to arrive at a particular interpretation with a particular patient during a particular session. I will concentrate on resistances in which both patient and analyst initially rely upon what is consciously known.     

霍妮的自我理论及其当代响应

霍妮以真实自我的理论预设为起点,通过对真实自我健康成长过程的自我实现模式的分析,完成了真实自我实在性的论证。真实自我有机地连贯了霍妮对自我异化的分析和对自我实现的探讨,构成了霍妮自我理论的核心基础。霍妮的真实自我思想,由于抛弃了传统精神分析的人性观,历史性地获得了当代心理学家的积极响应。