Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

March 13, 1979. SECRETS, ALLIANCES AND FAMILY FICTIONS: SOME PSYCHOANALYTIC OBSERVATIONS. Theodore J. Jacobs, M.D.

Dr. Jacobs presented material from two analytic cases to illustrate a subject seldom mentioned in the literature: the impact of individual secrets and secret alliances within the family on the development of individual pathology. Some of the secrets concern facts that must be concealed; others are fictitious and constitute family myths; all, however, serve to regulate the degree to which communication is possible.

The first case was that of a young woman whose feelings about her present analyst and about her previous analyst were a secret. These feelings reflected her secret feelings about her father and her stepfather which had been driven underground by her mother's behavior. Her positive feelings for her father had been hidden from her stepfather and mother. Her fantasies about her former analyst re-enacted another family secret: her mother's longing for her father, which was denied by the mother but was apparent to the patient and remembered through identification with her mother. Dr. Jacobs noted that exploration of the transference secret opened the way for recovery of other secrets. He also noted that secrets can serve as "screen experiences." The second patient, a middle-aged woman, had significant amnesia for adolescence as well as for early childhood. Her inability to remember reflected not only her own defensive operations but also those of every member of her family. Her parents felt a need to forget the Holocaust. Her father fictionalized his early life to ward off the memory of early traumas while her mother attempted to blot out several important losses and depressive episodes. The analysis of a screen memory and a piece of acting out allowed for the reconstruction of the patient's past. Although she thought the reconstruction was valid, it was not useful until verified by her mother.

Dr. Jacobs, extrapolating from the case