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A secret is a [[form ]] of hidden [[knowledge]]. The [[word ]] is etymologically related to excrement and [[seduction]]. Secret and excrement are both derived from the [[Latin ]] verb <i>cernere</i> (<i>crevi</i>, <i>cretum</i>) which means: 1) to sift, to [[separate]], to sort; 2) to discern or distinguish an [[object ]] from a distance. The prefix "ex" relates to the [[idea ]] of evacuation by sifting (excrement), the prefix "se" to the idea of [[separation]], setting aside, and preserving (secretion, secret).The secret has a positive, necessary side and a [[negative]], destructive side. [[Freud ]] referred to it periodically throughout his [[work]], but gave it a central [[place ]] that anticipated his later research in "The [[Uncanny]]" (1919h). In 1892 the term appeared in his writings with an [[anal ]] connotation whenever it brought to [[mind ]] "foul [[words]], those secrets we all [[know]], knowledge of which we force ourselves to hide from [[others]]" ("A [[Case ]] of Successful [[Treatment ]] by [[Hypnotism]]" (1892-93a)). The secret was then associated with unhealthy obsessions in the neuro-[[psychoses ]] of [[defense ]] (1894a). In 1900, in <i>The [[Interpretation ]] of [[Dreams]]</i> (1900a), Freud [[interpreted ]] dreams of [[exhibitionism ]] as a [[desire ]] to "keep a secret."In his [[discussion ]] of [[Dora]]'s secret, [[masturbation]], Freud wrote, "He who has eyes to see and ears to hear [[knows ]] that mortals cannot keep any secret" (1905e [1901]). In 1906, in "[[Psycho]]-[[Analysis ]] and the Establishment of Facts in [[Legal ]] Proceedings," (1906c), Freud distinguished the criminal's [[conscious ]] secret from the [[unconscious ]] secret of the [[hysteric]]. In "[[Infantile ]] [[Sexual ]] Theories" (1908c), he demonstrated the importance of the [[parents]]' lying and secrecy regarding the question of the [[child]]'s origins, which allows the [[infant ]] to access the secret in turn. "[[Children]], once they have been [[deceived ]] (the stork [[theory]]) . . . begin to suspect that there is something hidden that grownups keep for themselves and for this [[reason ]] they surround their later research in secrecy." The parents' secret is an enigmatic [[message ]] triggering the [[birth ]] of [[thinking ]] in the infant.In 1919, in his article "The Uncanny" (1919h), Freud gave considerable [[space ]] to secrets and their transmission. He discussed the various [[meanings ]] of the secret and its connections with the familiar, meetings, [[love ]] affairs, sin, intimate organs, commodes, and <i>oubliettes</i>. He also [[quotes ]] Friedrich [[Schelling]], who writes: "'We call <i>[[unheimlich]]</i> anything that must remain secret and which becomes [[manifest]].' <i>Heimlich</i> also designates a 'place without a [[ghost]].'" Freud goes on to study the theme of the [[double]], and its analysis strangely anticipates the [[ideas ]] of Nicolas [[Abraham ]] and Maria Torok on the phantom, the crypt, and the intrapsychic cave, and all the later work on the transmission of the secret across generations: "Doubling of the ego, [[splitting ]] of the ego, [[substitution ]] of the ego—the constant [[return ]] of the similar, [[repetition ]] of the same traits, characteristics, criminal [[acts]], even the same names in several successive generations."Abraham and Torok make an analogy between the work of the phantom and the work of the [[death ]] [[drive]], both [[working ]] in [[silence ]] without [[being ]] mediated in words. In their article, "De la topic réalitaire: Notations sur une métapsychologie du secret," they define the phantom as "a [[formation ]] of the unconscious that is unique in never having been conscious. It is a result of the transition, whose method remains to be determined, from the parents' unconscious to the child's unconscious." They add that the phantom is the "work in the unconscious of [[another]]'s inadmissible secret." The phantoms that haunt the [[living ]] are "the holes [[left ]] in us by the secrets of others." For these authors the phantom is associated with a preservative [[repression ]] that fixes, immobilizes, and "the [[present ]] [[past ]] forms a block of buried [[reality]], incapable of coming back to [[life ]] without crumbling into dust."After 1970 research on the [[role ]] of the secret and non-[[symbolization ]] in [[alienating ]] transgenerational transmission increased. [[Clinical ]] work increasingly helped illuminate [[concepts ]] such as non-transmission, the transmission of the inert (with Micheline Enriquez and the heritage of [[psychosis]]), the leaping of generations and alienating unconscious [[identification ]] ([[Alain ]] de Mijolla, Haydée Faimberg), and failed blocked [[mourning ]] (Jean Cournut). [[Incorporation]], encryption, [[psychic ]] fossilization, and unfulfilled mourning are reflections of the work of the negative that is [[active ]] in the transmission of secrets across several generations. The work of Daniel Stern on [[affective ]] tuning may, perhaps, serve as an explanatory link to account for this intergenerational psychic transmission, which continues to remain enigmatic.Systemic [[family ]] [[therapy ]] is also relevant to secrets and their relation to family [[myths]]. The [[oedipal ]] [[myth ]] is already a [[history ]] of a family secret. In families it is [[guilt ]] that creates secrets and all the pathogenic rules that follow from [[them]]. Many American family therapists have shown that family secrets ([[divorce]], [[suicide]], [[madness]], [[incest]]) can mask an implicit [[narcissistic ]] wound, a devaluation of [[self ]] [[image ]] and family image leading to abnormal [[behavior ]] in a descendant.We must not forget that our psychic life can only develop against a background that remains silent, secret—the secret Self of which [[Winnicott ]] speaks. And along with negative and positive secrets, living transmissions [[exist ]] alongside deadly transmissions of the secret.

# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1919h). The "uncanny." SE, 17: 217-256.