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Family secrets are an instance of the family's common store of knowledge wherein what is known is both privately and publicly denied. Members are enjoined from betraying a certain kind of confidence which, if openly expressed, would clash violently with the family's ego ideal and threaten its object ties. Not every confidence constitutes a family secret. Everyone may know the word cancer may not be mentioned around mother, or that father's inability to swim shames him. Avoiding such disclosures constitutes a sparing of feelings which we call discretion, i.e., a separating off from the main stream of avowed knowledge that which is best withheld.
To qualify as a family secret, however, rather than just a “sore point,” additional features must be present. There must be an emphatic injunction to all the family members not to reveal the secret because to do so would cause intolerable pain. Such injunctions are unconsciously communicated. They are rarely conscious prohibitions and even when the initial injunction is an explicit one, its maintenance does not require explicit verbal reinforcement. Without such an injunction family members are free to tease one another with exhortations not to be so “sensitive.” Causing anguish not only threatens a specific relationship but also violates the family's ego ideal of mutual love and consideration.
A second feature that transmutes one member's secret into a total family responsibility is its thematic elaboration. Father's shame over not being able to swim could be experienced as idiosyncratic; he could be spared revelations of his secret without its impinging very much on