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Secrets in Psychotherapy: Stories that Inform Clinical Work

Author(s) : Kathryn J. Zerbe

Reviews and Endorsements

Kathryn Zerbe, the internationally recognized psychoanalytic authority on eating disorders, turns her attention in this book to the topic of secrets. The result is truly exceptional since her book is serious and rigorously anchored in theory while being a relentless page-turner. Replete with clinical, social, and personal anecdotes of secret keeping and its attendant emotional burdens on mind and body, the text is at one moment poignant and heart-breaking and the next witty and amusing. In lesser hands, writing about secret sexual experiences, cloistered memories of abuse, extramarital affairs, hidden bank accounts, untold adoptions, and the like could easily turn tawdry, but Zerbe persistently retains impeccable ethics and sober cadence that safeguard her subjects' privacy and dignity with great care. Above all, she delineates practical, palpably thoughtful, and humane strategies to help those who are carrying their own or someone else's secrets much to their suffering. To put it bluntly, this is psychoanalysis at its best!
Salman Akhtar, MD. Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Jefferson Medical College. Training & Supervising Analyst, Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. Author of Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis

Zerbe, in her talented and artful way, gently peels back the layers of fear, hurt, loyalty, betrayal, and shame that form the loam of secret-keeping. She shows us the toll secret-keeping takes on our minds, and our bodies. She shines light on the ghosts of family members, who live within us and constrain our creativity when we become an unwitting vault for their secrets. She delineates ways to face secrets ethically and emerge more whole. This is original, perspective-changing work—compassionate, and experience near, filled with personal examples. You will find yourself and your patients inside its pages, in unexpected places, and your therapeutic work will be strengthened because of it.
Mary Jo Peebles, Ph.D, ABPP—Psychoanalyst, and author of Beginnings and When Psychotherapy Feels Stuck

There is no hiding it: from the first page Zerbe dives into the colorful and transformative world of secrets, keeping us riveted, our curiosities peaked, our appetites wet, as she explores and navigates the tension between holding things hidden and our desire to reveal. In doing so, Zerbe illustrates how a clinical process begins with a ‘secret reveal’ that, in its deconstruction, can forge a new path forward as structural change within the mindbody or bodymind becomes possible. Secrets and secret keeping are akin to symptoms---often used as maladaptive solutions to problems in living that feel unbearable. These exhumed secrets can become narrative links, often providing a missing piece to an emotional puzzle made up, perhaps, of only what’s been sort-of-known. Drawing on years of clinical experience and her creative imaginative talents, Zerbe sheds a bright new light on secrets, ghosts, their relationship to intergenerational traumas, and the interpersonal felt experience of sharing all with an other. This joint unpacking brings a multitude of feeling states—some welcome, some not—but ultimately freeing and unburdening. Zerbe is on to something, as secrets might just be more illuminating than our dreams.
Jean Petrucelli, Ph.D.; CEDS-S. Training & Supervising Analyst, The William Alanson White Institute; NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis; Editor of Body-States: Interpersonal/Relational Perspectives on the Treatment of Eating Disorders

Kathryn Zerbe’s new book, The Psychotherapy of Secrets: Stories that inform Life and Clinical Work, is a fascinating and invaluable exploration of the place of secrets in the psychotherapeutic process. As Freud wrote, “He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret.” Zerbe’s volume helps us to grasp the themes around which secrets tend to organize themselves in clinical practice and the emotional and physical impact of secrecy on our patients and their families. I especially appreciated her exploration of secrets as ‘unwanted ghosts’ that may haunt families for generations. As she illustrates, these hidden truths drive unconscious experiences that cannot be assimilated and mourned and from which psychotherapy may provide relief. Her book brings these ideas to life through vivid, in-depth case studies and the most skillful use of contemporary psychoanalytic theory, making it a must-read for practicing clinicians.
Tom Wooldridge, PsyD, ABPP, CEDS-C, FIPA. Associate Professor and Chair, Psychology, Golden Gate University and Faculty, Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California

Being entrusted with a secret is a gift, but Dr. Zerbe knows well how being a keeper of secrets can be a burden. Her writing as well as her practice is therapeutic. This book combines wisdom acquired over a lifetime with psychoanalytic perspectives to lighten the reader’s burden of secret keeping. A master storyteller, Dr Zerbe elucidates the prominent, intriguing, and problematic parts that secrets play in human life. You’ll be a wiser therapist for having read it.
Jon G. Allen, Ph.D., is Clinical Professor, Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine, Voluntary Faculty in Houston, TX, and author of Trusting in Psychotherapy