PhronesisCompulsive secret-keeping—the habitual, affect-driven suppression of personally significant information across relational contexts—is analyzed here as a dynamical systems phenomenon: a wrong attractor that traps individuals far from the functional equilibrium we term calibrated selective transparency (S^0). We formalize concealment as a displacement field D() and track cumulative drift via the integral = D()\,dt, introducing a restoring-force framework that characterizes the basin structure of both the concealment attractor and the authentic-disclosure basin.
Nine formal propositions establish the core theoretical claims: that compulsive concealment is self-reinforcing; that it forecloses genuine intimacy through a mechanism we call the Intimacy Foreclosure Theorem; that graduated disclosure constitutes the minimal sufficient intervention; and that the return to S^0 is achievable but path-dependent. We examine the mechanistic architecture of the secret-expansion loop, wherein each concealment episode increases the perimeter of what must be defended, and analyze the geometry of exit dynamics.
The discussion situates our framework within broader literatures on shame, attachment trauma, trust, and the crucial phenomenological distinction between privacy (chosen, boundaried, relational) and secrecy (compelled, boundaryless, anti-relational). Implications for clinical practice and relational health are noted.