Secrets as storytelling: Family histories and interpersonal intimacy

Abstract

Keeping and telling secrets are acts of intimacy. This article explores secret-telling-friendly methodologies, capable of encouraging individuals to share their life stories in their own terms, with particular episodes, emotional connections, protagonists, and also secrets. The openness of our research design played an important part in the identification of the role of secret-storytelling in the understanding of life. This was enhanced by methodological tools mobilized during the biographical interviews with individuals of families (the life calendar and the socio-genealogical tree). It testifies the importance of the research design, and method lato sensu, in the sociological analysis of secrets. Each secret connects to the person’s biography, social positioning, historical context, and generational anchor, contributing to understand more about wider social, gender, family, interpersonal, and normative values of given time-space coordinates. Secrets are narrative and emotional devices to build biographical narratives and chronologize life stories, bridging biography and society, exemplarily.