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We keep parts of our personal histories, inclinations, or physical appearance to ourselves because we prefer it that way. Some matters are no one else’s business. You may, for instance, opt not to share with others details about your love life, medical history, or childhood, and you may, consequently, perceive questions—particularly repeated or insistent questions—about those things as prying on the other’s part.
When an issue we don’t talk about is one we regard as private, we do not, on account of our silence, experience a gap between whom we know ourselves to be “underneath” and who we appear to be to the outside world. There is also no gap when hidden aspects of identity add richness to the personality, as when a scientist plays in a music band on weekends. Or when concealment is done for self-protection, as when Emperor Claudius, from Robert Grave’s novel I, Claudius, pretends to be stupid in order to avoid becoming the target of political rivals.
Sometimes, however, we may come to see our public persona as misaligned with our private self. A gap opens up between the two, and possibly a chasm. This is what I am interested in here.
Not everyone is bothered by the existence of a gap, even a large one, between public and private self. Some revel in their ability to fool others. Consider Eddie Chapman, a professional criminal who persuaded the likes of actress Marlene Dietrich that he was a well-off playboy. After the start of World War II, Chapman went on to put his skills—in both robbery and conmanship—to a different use and became a double agent whose codename, appropriately enough, was “Zigzag.” It appears that Chapman was a person for whom creating an elaborate hall of mirrors was a way to realize his potential. He could live with many faces because he was all and neither of them. He was just what he wanted to be: a swindler.
Chapman’s case, however, is unusual. For most people, living a double life is a burden. For instance, Bernie Madoff, who once ran a Ponzi scheme worth billions, said that he felt relief upon getting caught. Madoff’s reaction is not atypical.
What about more ordinary cases? When does the merely private come to be experienced as concealed? What can a person do when that happens?
Hiding What Is Trivial
A person may sometimes hide what doesn’t need hiding, such as a balding spot on the head or the sound she makes when she sneezes. It is important to tread lightly in such cases since details of this sort may matter to a person without being objectively important.
At other times, secrets are kept past their expiration date. I once heard an interview with a physician research hospital who’d gotten into college without having finished high school. He’d falsely stated on his application that he had a high school diploma. He went on to do very well in college and later in medical school but apparently had nightmares for years over the missing school certificate. The fear he would get “discovered” and have his medical degree revoked, irrational though it was, appeared recalcitrant and difficult to dislodge. He’d apparently come to a point at which he could put that all behind him, or else he would not have brought it up in an interview, but fear of what no longer matters may become habitual and persist without its original object.
In many cases, however, what is hidden is a source of understandable shame or embarrassment, as when a parent has mixed feelings about a child or a person knows she has hurt a loved one. Then what?
The Diary
A diary is, perhaps, the least risky way to try to come to grips with what the shameful or embarrassing. A personal diary is a document that lives partly in the public sphere and partly outside it. At a minimum, it invites us to be honest with ourselves and admit to ourselves what we may not want to admit. In addition, to express in words the thoughts and tendencies we want to keep hidden is to voice them and take a step toward closing the gap between our public persona and our private self.
But what makes it low risk makes it low reward as well: it is not sufficiently public.
The Therapist and the Best Friend
When therapy works, it may work partly because it provides an opportunity to reveal what is normally concealed and, thus, to relieve oneself of the burden of silence. The matter is a delicate one, of course. Not every practitioner may know how to avoid making the client feel judged, but having someone understand and accept what shames us can make a person “whole.”
An intimate friend can play a similar role.
But one hearer may not be enough. In addition, a well-meaning other may accept and even suggest a narrative that lacks courage and leaves dust in the corners of the psyche.
Going Public
Sometimes, a person wants to confess to the whole world. Consider, for instance, Confessions by St. Augustine, a memoir, likely the first of its kind, in which philosopher and theologian Augustine of Hippo, who would later be canonized, talks about periods of his life that he later came to regret deeply.
Or consider the memoir Late Admissions by Glenn Loury. Loury is a very well-regarded economist with thousands of scholarly citations and a professorship at an Ivy League school. However, he had a checkered youth that included an arrest for domestic violence, addiction problems, and lapses of judgment one would not expect of a professor at Brown University. In a recent interview about the book, the host asked Loury why he chose to go public with the details of his life.
Host: Glenn, why did you write this book with the degree of revelation you chose to share about your personal—I'd have to say—failings?
Glenn Loury: I thought it was time to come clean with myself, with my children. I thought there was no point in playing about such a project. The book couldn't be a pose. It couldn't be a brand-enhancing advert. It had to come from the soul. … I don't need to write a memoir. It's not as if I can't make a living just teaching and doing research and economics. The whole project would have seemed like a pose. There would have been something fraudulent about it if I didn't tell the truth. And so, I did.
Why did Loury or anyone else need to “come clean?” This takes us to the first of the two questions I began with and one I have not addressed so far: when is the private experienced as concealed rather than simply private?
Importantly, short of cases involving ongoing crimes, what is hidden generally is no one else’s business. Loury did not owe it to the world to reveal the details of his youth. (And some readers of his memoir may think he revealed too much.) It is, however, sometimes reasonable to see a secret as more than a private detail. This may happen when we judge correctly that people will make false assumptions about what they don’t know on the basis of what they know. One would not expect that a deeply religious person such as St. Augustine would have once led a life against religious precepts or that a soft-spoken economics professor at a top school was once arrested for a crime involving violence.
Openly admitting the existence of a part of oneself that clashes with what others know tends to heal the divide inside, even without changing any other facts. There is a good deal to say about that, but I will just say this: the damaged parts of the psyche cannot, in general, be excised, like an unwanted tree branch. What is healthy and strong in us cannot be protected from what is not by keeping the damaged parts hidden. The good news is, however, that there is no need. We are often stronger than we know. What is healthy can take care of itself, and if we let it, it can heal the damaged part, too.
