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 t

A wife keeps a secret bank account.... A husband has an affair.... A teen refuses to say where she goes at night.... A family therapist for twenty-five years, Evan Imber-Black fills her book with compelling real-life stories of people confronting the dilemmas of family secrets. She challenges the popular notion that secrets are always bad and that the best medicine is to tell all; thoughtless "truth-telling" (often modeled by talk shows) can create years of dangerous fallout.

With insight and compassion, "The Secret Life of Families" offers realistic guidance on a range of issues:
-- how to tell when a secret is hurting your family
-- how to handle difficult issues like sexuality, race or religion, adoption and artificial insemination, serious illness, and divorce
-- what to tell -- and not to tell -- young children
-- questions to ask yourself before revealing an important secret
-- what to expect after a secret is opened; and much more

Author: Evan Imber-Black
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 09/01/1999
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.97lbs
Size: 8.72h x 5.58w x 0.85d
ISBN13: 9780553375527
ISBN10: 0553375520
BISAC Categories:
- Psychology | Interpersonal Relations
- Psychology | Psychotherapy | Couples & Family

About the Author
Evan Imber-Black, Ph.D., is Director of Program Development at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York City and Professor of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She is also immediate past-president of the American Family Therapy Academy. Her previous 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, where she practices family therapy.