Luis Rojas-Marcos: “In Spain optimism is frowned upon. The one who is happy seems foolish”

The trajectory of this psychiatrist who was head of public health in New York City emerges in two dozen books: his attention deficit as a child —and the teacher Lolina, “who gave me the opportunity to be Luis”—, his difficulties with the language when he emigrated to New York at the age of 24, his separations, his faith in optimism and dialogue.

He has just published

(Harper Collins) and has come to Madrid to speak about aging at the Mapfre Foundation.

The interview is at the Palace hotel.

The waiters know him.

He champions optimism for vigorous longevity.

But as a model you complex yourself.

I'm not looking to complex.

That's why I count my problems, so they can see that I'm a normal person —statistically speaking— and to feel normal.

How much of your strength derives from overcoming difficulties?

In the struggle to survive, qualities emerge that we did not know we had.

A reservation?

Yes. Between 30% and 40% of those who have experienced adversity discover things about themselves that they would not have known.

No one is compensated for losing a loved one, but we call it post-traumatic growth.

Not everything is anatomy.

In 1990, the WHO defined health as physical, psychological and social well-being.

Have you turned your pain into resilience?

Resilience is a mixture of resistance and flexibility: resisting the blow and adapting so as not to break.

Facing difficult situations I have not discovered in myself exceptional qualities.

People have helped me: angels of flesh and blood.

If there are angels of flesh and blood, there will be demons.

Few, but they attract attention.

Bad people who have no problem making others suffer are a minority.

I am talking about people who have tortured, for example in the army, and they justify the damage they have caused.

We are good at justifying.

TRUE?

That does not mean that sadism —of parents with children or of children with parents— surprises you.

In a high percentage it occurs due to drugs or alcohol.

That's not to say that drugs or alcohol always make you lose control.

There is no doubt that solidarity is more frequent.

That's why it's not news.

As a child, why did you need attention?

I grew up in an environment that was not very tolerant and very authoritarian on the part of my father and society.

But his brothers adapted.

Yes. Going unnoticed helps.

Even if you don't understand things.

But when you have the urge to speak before you're told to speak and to go up onto rooftops, things get complicated.

They were four.

Did he claim affection from his beloved mother?

My behavior got me slapped, not honey.

The affection, the compassion, came when they saw you sad.

And you felt sad because you understood almost nothing.

When she asked her mother if she wanted to be buried or cremated, she replied: "Surprise me!"

Has he been her model?

helped me.

Although sometimes I have not been able to avoid having an authoritarian streak.

She was one of those angels of flesh and blood because what seemed to the educational system and my father to be a rebellious child, she saw as normal.

Isn't a bad mother the same as a bad father?

This question is important.

If a mother fails, it draws attention because, in history, more fathers than mothers have failed.

A mother who doubts whether she was right to have children is a bad mother.

The bad father is the one who abandons them.

Every day less.

Today the father is expected to go to the park, change diapers and be affectionate.

The good mother is a self-pressure promoted by society.

Any change in motherhood generates a change in fatherhood.

Rafa Nadal announced that he would be a father and that he did not expect this to affect his career

It is a way of reassuring his followers.

In Spain optimism is frowned upon.

Here not being happy is the usual thing.

The one who is seems stupid.

We like to laugh and complain.

Luis Rojas-Marcos, photographed in the library of his home in New York. Víctor Llorente

He dedicated

No. And I admire people who dare to start over.

He separated in 1978. And he wrote

That marked me.

When a married patient came in anxiously he would ask how things were going with his wife.

They both ended up coming.

The consultation was filled with couples with problems.

I had to get another chair because they entered two by two.

Does it draw from your personal experience?

Yes. My wife, Leonor, and I went to a family therapist.

We took the children to a session.

She helped us see that we had an unsolvable relationship.

He also separated from his second wife, an American and a psychiatrist.

In 2012. I have not remarried.

In his books he says that union with another person is a universal obsession.

And he quotes Freud: "We need the love of a partner to survive."

Have you changed your mind?

The ideal situation for me is as a couple.

I have had very good couples.

Today I have a partner.

Younger than you?

20 years less.

He works in hospital administration.

The psychiatrist Luis Rojas-Marcos, on the terrace of his house in Manhattan.

Victor Llorente

Being the first for someone else only happens in childhood?

I do not know.

As a child I had the unconditional support of my mother and my sister, who when I went out, she would put the pillow covered on the bed so that my father would not notice her.

Today I think that being the first for someone is something temporary.

It is essential to be, but it does not have to be always the same person.

The more educational level the woman has, the more she divorces.

The man, backwards.

A woman 50 years ago was, statistically, someone passive.

A trained person ceases to be passive.

Has the feminist movement also liberated men?

It has freed many from harshness.

The tragic history of humanity is still written by impulsive men, those who kill, even though there are men who save humanity.

Violence is a male characteristic statistically speaking.

The liberation of women has had and will have great consequences for humanity.

Compassionate nature today is no longer seen as a feminine attribute.

Write about the father as the weak link in the family affective chain.

What kind of father has he been?

That is changing.

I have been the best I have known and could be.

Would you do things differently?

Sure: I would reduce my work hours.

I came to the US as an immigrant.

And I chased the opportunities.

I remember asking the person who appointed me chief of psychiatry why he had chosen me: "Because you get along very well with people and you work a lot."

Working hard had a cost.

What he writes reflects his problems except for the death of his son Joseph four years ago.

I do not can.

[He breaks].

I could if you were my psychiatrist or my therapist.

I don't keep it because I know that keeping it is poison.

It was an unexpected loss, an accident.

She was 38 years old.

He was a friend.

An illness is bad, but one day they call you and tell you that it is gone...

Luis Rojas-Marcos, at his home in New York.

He arrived in this city in 1968 as an immigrant. Víctor Llorente

Defend optimism.

How do you find it?

I hope I can get over it, but being sad because a loved one is leaving is normal.

Being sad is not pessimism.

He has told in his books that he suffered from depression.

What caused her?

Depression exists without an apparent cause.

You feel unenthusiastic.

But it was for my son.

You think about it, you don't sleep, you stop seeing meaning.

A psychiatrist can try to get out of his bad times only to a certain extent by looking for an explanation for what is happening to him.

But sometimes you have to go to the psychiatrist and talk.

We are what we speak

Stephen Hawking wrote that great achievements are made for speaking up, great failures for not doing so.

But at school he talked too much.

They were supposed to teach you to speak.

But they told you: "Don't interrupt."

Nobody told you;

"Treat yourself with love, trust yourself."

In 50 years, who has changed more, you or psychiatry?

Both.

Now medicine works on quality of life.

It's not just the exercise.

Also the contraceptive pill or Viagra have improved life.

Do you still run the New York marathon?

Yes, but slow.

His latest book,

And the uncertainty that surrounds us.

We no longer aspire to happiness, we want to be well now, not when we retire.

We have the sense of a cracked future.

Do you write in Spanish or English?

Psychiatric Topics, in English.

Books, in Spanish.

Fellini said that each language provides a different way of seeing life.

I speak relatively well English and Spanish.

I defend myself in French because when my parents saw that I wasn't studying they said: "Let me learn a language", and they sent me to France.

So you have two ways of looking at life?

You are right.

Because you associate emotions with words.

José Guimón spoke of bipersonality in bilingual people.

We did the doctorate together and we showed that patients who have spent the first part of their lives with a language and then migrate should be evaluated in their first language.

If we asked them in English to paint a dog, they did it differently than if we asked them in Spanish.

Freud kept a dog,

I had one,

.

Animals have helped me a lot.

I speak to them.

[He shows me a video on his mobile with his two finches on the loose around his house).

How do they get them back in the cage?

Putting food on them.

Can talking to oneself be self-deception?

Not if you're honest with yourself.

"Look, Luis, what you said you shouldn't have said" is one thing.

If you have committed an outrage and tell yourself that it matters little, you are not talking to yourself, you are deceiving yourself.

You do it if you deny yourself something that is real.

"I wasn't the one who started the fight."

It's one thing to encourage yourself: "It wasn't that terrible."

That's good.

But if you believe a lie, you have a problem.

Talking is risking?

In a moment of tension, yes.

Doing so can be a sign of maturity or inopportuneness.

We cannot categorize.

It is generally positive.

You can mess up, but there is your ability, or inability, to notice.

Speech depends on neurons in Broca's area that convert feelings into words.

Do we all have them?

All.

Why do some of us talk more?

All of us, except the deaf and dumb, have the ability to speak, but genes mark our personality.

The first trait studied was introversion and extraversion.

Do women live longer because they talk more?

There are biological reasons: your hormonal system —a mixture of estrogens and progesterone— prolongs life.

Social values ​​encourage in women the importance of survival.

Are there more male or female suicides?

Men.

The woman endures more.

Are there ways of being that are associated with longevity?

Yes. Extraversion, for example.

Or optimism.

The hope of someone who believes that he will achieve something, not thanks to God, thanks to him.

Disciplined people who exercise...

It is scientifically proven that whoever says “I am going to pray for you” harms you.

Yes. They did a study with people who had suffered a heart attack.

If they want to pray, let them pray, but don't let them tell you.

The "should" is poisonous.

Yes. It can become a martyrdom for the person: I should be happy, I should fix myself more... You consume your self-esteem in unrealistic goals.

Since when is it known?

I would say that since I was 40 years old I know more or less where I am going to go.

Although sometimes I am surprised.

He has a psychologist daughter.

Yes Laura.

Bruno is dedicated to making video games.

And Carolena, the little one, is a doctor.

I don't see them enough.

Should?

[Laugh].

He could try.

Ensures that the placebo effect cures.

The state of mind, the will to be cured —which implies the awareness of illness and the determination to seek help— influences.

The mind maintains a continuous connection with the body through the nervous and endocrine systems.

But laboratories are not interested in investigating this issue because they make millions selling drugs.

What can you, who has been responsible for public health in New York City, do about the business of healthcare?

Little bit.

The pharmaceutical industry gives money to the parties.

That economic priority prevents the US from negotiating with the pharmaceutical industry as Spain does.

What costs 70 here can cost 700 there. I'm not exaggerating.

There, to have health insurance, you have to be poor non-immigrant, over 65 or about to die.

But of course, what happens if you survive?

When he sends the money, he loses his sanity.

It is a vicious circle.

In the United States, doctors are licensed with a debt of 100,000 dollars.

They need to make money.

How to prepare an optimistic old age?

Misfortune and happiness have a subjective part, which is the importance we give them.

We can live without water, but perhaps not without hope.

Do you still play the drums?

Yes. And a little piano.

Despite my age, my hearing works.

And the music touches my soul.

That, and talking to myself and friends.

Has many?

Not so many.

I have many acquaintances.

Before a medical failure?

You have to apologize.

I've had three patient suicides that I didn't see coming.

One was an engineer who had already cut his wrist.

A month later he asked me to remove the stitches where they had been placed.

At eight in the morning, he took the subway and, as soon as it arrived, he jumped.

Another was a Korean patient with whom he spoke through her husband, he kept part of her information because he considered it humiliating.

She jumped into the river.

You can only apologize.

When you do, you're also less likely to have the patient, well…complain.

How do you apologize to yourself?

You have to accept that you were wrong.

Learn what you have done wrong and how to avoid it.

Accepting the error is useful from all points of view.

Have you ever gone crazy?

Not that I know of.

The 14-year-old Luis liked it.

Going crazy for me is having a serious problem and for society, throwing the house out the window.

Stress gets good press because it's linked to work, and anxiety doesn't because it's associated with someone unable to cope.

They can help us manage.

No need to go crazy.

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