The Secret Life of Families: Making Decisions About Secrets: When Keeping Secrets Can Harm You, When Keeping Secrets Can Heal You-And How to Know the Difference

· Sold by Bantam
Ebook
336
Pages
Eligible

About this ebook

Secrets come in all shapes and sizes. And for families as well as individuals, they are built on a complex web of shifting motives and emotions. But today, when personal revelations are posted on the Internet or sensationalized on afternoon talk shows, we risk losing touch with how important secrets are--how they are used and abused, their power to harm and heal.

In this important work, Evan Imber-Black explores the nature of secrets, helping us understand:

The distinction between healthy privacy and toxic secrecy
What to tell--and not to tell--young children
How to safely confront a family "zone of silence"
Why adolescents need to have some secrets--and where to draw the line
The effect of "official" secrets, like sealed adoption records and medical testing
What to consider before revealing an important secret
And much more

Filled with moving first-person stories, The Secret Life of Families provides perspective on some of today's most sensitive personal and social issues. Giving voice to our deepest fears and to our power to overcome them, this is a book that will be talked about for years to come.

About the author

Evan Imber-Black is the director of Program Development at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York City and a professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is also a past president of the American Family Therapy Academy. Her books include Rituals for Our Times (with Janine Roberts, Ed.D.) and the professional book Secrets in Families and Family Therapy, which she edited. The mother of two grown children, she lives with her husband in Westchester, New York, where she practices family therapy.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.