37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
the truth about lies, July 1, 2006
This review is from: Anatomy of a Secret Life: The Psychology of Living a Lie (Hardcover)
In my academic life, I was fascinated by privacy and secrecy and actually published some articles on those topics. So I was naturally eager to gain some new insights. Like many authors who are also psychoanalysts, Saltz raises questions instead of delivering answers.
Saltz organizes the book by categories of people with secrets: gay men and lesbians, lovers, addicts, and criminals. She illustrates with examples, composites of her own former patients, and sometimes with stories of public figures.
This technique represents the book's strength -- facinating stories -- but also weakness. One person's story rarely can be seen as an exemplar.
I can't help wondering how our views might change if we organized secrets by motivation rather than category. Some people have what Saltz calls malignant secrets, such as cheating spouses and criminals. Others have what she calls benign secrets, i.e., things we do that don't cause harm and aren't anyone else's business.
But we have other secrets that challenge us. Some people have secrets to protect their jobs and their lives -- and not just gay men and lesbians. Many years ago, I met a man who never told his employer he was Catholic.
Then we have secrets that represent simple on-disclosure and secrets that involve telling (and sometimes living) actual lies. We have secrets that represent discretion rather than necessity. I once knew a woman whose daughter was serving a long prison term. When asked, "Do you have children?" she had learned to come up with a story that didn't lead to more follow-up questions.
Some people keep secrets because they have inappropriate answers to appropriate questions. Casual acquaintances and coworkers feel comfortable asking most adults, "Where are your parents?" or, "Are you going home for the holidays?" Some truthful answers would stop the conversation cold. Instead, the speaker wisely opts for secrecy and perhaps a lie. Stressful? Maybe. Necessary? Yes.
What would the author, a psychoanalyst, have to say about these situations? When is the decision to keep secrets a wise one? We get some ideas in the very last chapter and I would have liked to see them developed more throughout the book.
Finally, I was disappointed in the author's repeated reference and judgmental attitude to secret-keepers Bill Clinton and (she claims) Martha Stewart. Many believe that maintaining Clinton's secret would be in the best interests of the country, if not the Clintons' marriage. Ironically, Monica Lewinsky was on her way to an arranged job at Revlon. She would have disappeared among other faceless twenty-somethings in the lower rungs of the corporate ladder. The US lost international credibility by getting fixated on what, in nearly every other country, wouldn't make headlines.
Martha Stewart's case has been critized by lawyers and legal scholars, many of whom claim the prosecution relied on a questionable interpretation of law and evidence. Stewart's own lawyers were less than stellar. It's quite possible that Stewart has few secrets after all, at least related to her alleged crime.
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29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Double Life, April 15, 2006
This review is from: Anatomy of a Secret Life: The Psychology of Living a Lie (Hardcover)
Dr. Saltz takes a pinch of Freud with a dash of cognitive behavioral pyschology to create the framework of "Anatomy of a Secret Life." Two years ago, she published "Becoming Real" which explored the past of her clients to free them from their self-destructive behaviors of today. She utilizes the same formula in her new book to look at the very public and secret lives of Lawrence of Arabia and Charles Lindbergh among other case studies. Written in a chatty & readable style, she hammers home her point that secret lives are rooted in their childhood and are very destructive. M. Scott Peck makes the same point from a religious viewpoint in his 1983 book, "People of the Lie."
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
INTERESTING, THOUGHT-PROVOKING BOOK, May 2, 2006
This review is from: Anatomy of a Secret Life: The Psychology of Living a Lie (Hardcover)
I found this to be a clear-cut, simple explanation of a universal human condition -- the need to keep secrets, and how those secrets can be helpful and necessary, or sometimes, risky and even deadly. The writing is clear and easily understood (even early explanation of the id and ego -- and the first time I think I've ever really understood either) and has a pleasant lack of judgement for even the basest behaviors -- seemed oddly humanizing to me.
I guess this book most attracted me because I really do take people at their word and am stunned with a friend's secrets come out -- shocking and hard to grasp. It's made me understand the whole phenomena more and really has me wondering: what secrets do I keep? Are they healthy or building toward disaster? I actually made a list of my secrets and was surprised at the emotional charge some of them had -- not so much my fear of discovery as the way they affect behavior. For example, I have a friend who I once -- years ago -- gossiped about viciously and as it turned out, incorrectly. I've never had the guts to confess and whenever friend calls, I work so hard to be her very best friend, not because we're so particularly close, but because I have this mean little secret driving me on. Interesting subject. Much to chew on.
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