The Benefits and Burdens of Keeping Secrets
Why Read This
What Makes This Article Worth Your Time
Summary
What This Article Is About
Dale M. Kushner weaves personal memoir with recent psychological research to explore the complex role secrets play in human life. Drawing on social psychologist Michael Slepian’s landmark studies, she notes that the average person carries around 13 secrets at any given time — and that what damages well-being is not the act of hiding them, but how frequently the mind wanders back to them. Secrets also connect deeply to Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow — the repressed aspects of the self we keep hidden even from our own conscious awareness.
The article presents secrets as neither purely harmful nor purely beneficial. They can be burdensome — creating shame, isolation, and moral conflict — but also joyful, as in surprise parties, marriage proposals, or private wishes held close to the heart. Kushner draws a research-backed distinction between confession (revealing a secret to the person it concerns) and confiding (telling a trusted third party), noting that confiding typically goes better than expected. The piece closes by inviting readers to reflect on their own relationship with secrecy.
Key Points
Main Takeaways
Rumination, Not Concealment, Hurts
Slepian’s research found it is not how often you hide a secret but how often you mentally return to it that damages psychological well-being.
Secrets Bond and Exclude
Sharing secrets signals trust and deepens relationships, while being excluded from a secret-sharing circle can make people feel less worthy and socially isolated.
Jung’s Shadow and Hidden Self
Carl Jung’s concept of the “shadow” describes desires, instincts, and feelings we keep secret even from ourselves — repressed material that shapes our behaviour beneath conscious awareness.
Confession vs. Confiding
Researchers distinguish revealing a secret to the person it concerns (confession) from sharing it with a trusted third party (confiding) — and confiding typically turns out better than people expect.
Secrets Can Delight and Energise
Slepian’s 2023 research identified positive secrets — surprises and marriage proposals — that generate joy and anticipatory energy rather than psychological strain.
38 Categories, 13 at a Time
Slepian’s 2017 study identified 38 categories of personal secrets — from infidelity and illegal behaviour to pregnancy and planned surprises — with the average person holding about 13 simultaneously.
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Article Analysis
Breaking Down the Elements
Main Idea
Secrets Shape Us From Within
Secrets are not simply things we hide from others — they are active forces in our psychological lives that affect well-being, identity, and relationships depending not on whether we conceal them, but on how much mental space they occupy.
Purpose
To Inform and Reflect
Kushner blends memoir, cultural observation, and empirical research to give readers both a richer understanding of secrecy’s psychological mechanisms and an invitation to examine their own hidden lives with curiosity rather than shame.
Structure
Personal → Cultural → Empirical → Redemptive
Opens with a childhood memoir, widens to cultural and literary examples, grounds itself in Slepian’s research findings, then pivots to the positive side of secrecy before closing with a reflective question directed at the reader — a movement from anecdote to data to invitation.
Tone
Warm, Curious & Balanced
Kushner avoids moralising — she neither condemns secrecy nor champions radical disclosure. Her tone is that of a thoughtful, psychologically informed companion who takes the reader’s inner complexity seriously and resists easy conclusions.
Key Terms
Vocabulary from the Article
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Tough Words
Challenging Vocabulary
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Mutually reliant on one another; used here to describe how humans evolved in small groups where members depend on each other for survival, making social connection essential to well-being.
“Humans are social pack animals that thrive in small cooperative, interdependent groups.”
Pushed down into the unconscious mind and kept out of conscious awareness — a psychological mechanism, central to Jungian theory, by which uncomfortable desires or feelings are hidden even from oneself.
“aspects of ourselves we believe are undesirable and repressed”
Captivated and fascinated to the point of being unable to look away; held in the grip of intense interest or excitement by something compelling.
“Plot-driven novels succeed on the premise that readers are enthralled by chasing down a secret.”
To make something less severe, painful, or serious; to lessen the impact of something difficult — used here to describe why someone might hide a terminal diagnosis from a loved one.
“we may keep a terminal diagnosis secret from a loved one to mitigate their worry and fear”
A solemn, binding agreement or promise — used here to describe the way some personal wishes or hopes are kept private as a kind of sacred inner commitment, held close as a source of meaning.
“Other secrets can be a sacred covenant with ourselves, a wish we keep secret that entails hope and faith.”
Recurring themes, images, or narrative devices that appear across many stories in a culture — used here to describe how secrets as sources of magic and power appear repeatedly in fairy tales and fantasy literature.
“These tropes point to a hidden world in which all things are possible.”
Reading Comprehension
Test Your Understanding
5 questions covering different RC question types
1According to Slepian’s research, the more frequently a person actively conceals a secret from others, the more their psychological well-being suffers.
2How does the article define the distinction between “confession” and “confiding”?
3Which sentence best explains why being excluded from a secret-sharing circle is psychologically harmful?
4Evaluate the following statements about Slepian’s research findings as described in the article.
In his 2017 study, Slepian identified 38 common categories of secrets, with the average person carrying about 13 secrets at any given time.
In his 2023 study, Slepian identified surprises and marriage proposals as uniquely positive secrets.
Slepian found that the act of actively hiding secrets from others is the primary driver of psychological harm.
Select True or False for all three statements, then click “Check Answers”
5The article notes that by age six, children understand that sharing a secret signals relationship closeness. What can most reasonably be inferred from this detail about the nature of secrets?
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Slepian found that the average person carries about 13 secrets at any given time across 38 identified categories. His most striking finding was that how often people actively concealed secrets had little effect on well-being — what mattered was how often their minds wandered back to those secrets. Rumination, not concealment, is the primary source of harm.
Carl Jung’s shadow refers to the unconscious aspects of our personality that we consider undesirable — repressed desires, instincts, negative emotions, and even suppressed positive traits like creativity. These are secrets kept from our own conscious mind rather than from others. The article uses this concept to show that secrecy operates not just socially but deep within our own psychology.
Yes — Slepian’s 2023 research specifically identified positive secrets, with surprises and marriage proposals as the clearest examples. The article also describes secrets as sources of personal wonder, sacred inner commitments, and even literary excitement. The overall picture Kushner paints is that secrets exist on a full spectrum, from burdensome to joyful, depending on their nature and how much mental space they occupy.
Readlite provides curated articles with comprehensive analysis including summaries, key points, vocabulary building, and practice questions across 9 different RC question types. Our Ultimate Reading Course offers 365 articles with 2,400+ questions to systematically improve your reading comprehension skills.
This article is rated Intermediate. The writing blends personal memoir with research findings and references psychological concepts such as Jung’s shadow and the distinction between confession and confiding. Readers need to track multiple threads and draw inferences from research data, but the language remains accessible throughout and concepts are explained as they appear.
Dale M. Kushner is a writer and psychotherapist who contributes to Psychology Today’s Transcending the Past blog, which focuses on themes of trust, memory, healing, and the psychology of human relationships. Her writing characteristically brings together literary sensibility and clinical insight to explore complex emotional experiences in an accessible way.
The Ultimate Reading Course covers 9 RC question types: Multiple Choice, True/False, Multi-Statement T/F, Text Highlight, Fill in the Blanks, Matching, Sequencing, Error Spotting, and Short Answer. This comprehensive coverage prepares you for any reading comprehension format you might encounter.
