The Secret, A Hidden-Found Process

Abstract

Abstract Following the secret’s customs, encountering it in the myriad manifestations of psychic life and relational domino effect, the current work separates the secret from the act of secretiveness and from trauma, with which the former often confused. The fact that it is intrinsically linked to truth, as it is hidden information waiting to be found, defines the secret as a process involved in working with information-about-self and the self: it is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be discovered. This hidden – found process that accompanies us our whole life is transformed according to the biological and psychological stages one must go through. Thus, the secret is interpreted differently, passing through successive stages of development. From the archaic game of “hide-and-seek”, through the primitive scene of “peeping through the keyhole” and discovering the secret of one’s own genitals, continuing with the type of secret offered by a relationship of friendship in latency, reaching the desecretisation and de-sacralisation of adolescence, the secret is an “act of secrecy” that requires an interior architecture as well as borders between the internal and external universe. Otherwise, the “act of secrecy” fails and turns into secretiveness, a failure of the hidden - found process, because either nothing can be hidden (as in paranoid mechanisms) or everything must be hidden (as in trauma mechanisms).