Enrique Rojas He is a doctor who writes: a psychiatrist who likes to pass on his knowledge and a writer who addresses the sensitive issues of contemporary society: the anxietythe depression and the existential emptiness, happiness. She has been helping her patients solve their problems for more than 40 years and has sold more than three million books Worldwide.
red He is a professor of psychiatry and medical psychology and director of the Rojas-Estape Institute, in Madrid, Spain, dedicated to the research, study, knowledge, and clinical practice of psychological and psychiatric disorders. His clinical and university training took place above all in Madrid, Oxford, London and New York.
In this days red is in Argentina. He thursday may 4 will be at the Buenos Aires Book Fair where he will talk about emotional intelligence and present his latest book Everything you need to know about lifepublished by Editorial Planeta, a guide to achieve full personal development.
This book addresses the importance of achieving psychological maturity to achieve full personal development, and how it affects the different aspects of life, both when relating to the people around us, and when facing adversities or overcoming traumas.
The books of red they have two aspects: the clinics, dedicated to depression, anxiety, panic attacks, personality disorders and behavioral disorders in adolescents; and others on essays and humanistic themes, on happiness, will, the world of feelings or heartbreak.
Infobae Let’s read talked to him.
–What does your new book bring to the world of mental health?
-It is a practical GPS to move freely in those great psychological issues.
“Happiness does not depend on reality but on the interpretation of reality”
-The world is increasingly hostile and in this context the role of the psychiatrist is changing, it is taking more preponderance, do you agree?
-The psychiatrist is the doctor of behavior. In the United States and in the most important countries of the world, he has become the family doctor. The psychiatrist is the family doctor of the West.
-Because?
-Because society has changed more in fifteen years than in a century. Everything changes, flows, oscillates and the human being is quite lost.
-What are the most common psychiatric disorders today?
-In this order: depressionsthe anxiety and the crisis of panic and personality disorders.
-In recent years much progress has been made in the treatment of depression.
-That’s how it is. The advances are enormous.
Can depression be cured?
– Of course. Today more than 90 percent of endogenous depressions are cured. We have “vaccines” that stop relapses in depression.
How do you define happiness?
–I am going to give you two definitions. One: “Happiness consists in having good health and a bad memory.” The other: “Happiness consists of being happy with oneself when verifying that there is a good relationship between what one has desired and what one has achieved.”
It may interest you: Four steps to create “atomic habits”, the small decisions that promise to improve our lives
-And in between the reality…
-Look, happiness does not depend on reality but on the interpretation of reality. Happiness is also not being wrong in expectations.
– What does it mean ‘do not err in expectations’?
– Complete and total happiness does not exist. It doesn’t happen in this neighborhood. It occurs in the other neighborhood. That’s why I say that you have to have big goals, but not want too many things. Happiness consists in moderating expectations, not asking life too much, just like in love.
When: Thursday May 4
Hour: 17.30
Hall: Julio Cortazar
Pavilion: Yellow
♦ Born in Granada, Spain, in 1949.
♦ He is a professor of Psychiatry and Medical Psychology and director of the Spanish Institute for Psychiatric Research in Madrid.
♦ His clinical and university training took place in Madrid, Oxford, London and New York.
♦ He is an international lecturer and speaker at congresses and scientific meetings on topics related to his specialty.
♦ Participated in numerous book fairs in Europe and America; she sold more than three million books and his work was translated into numerous languages.
♦ His books include: “5 tips to enhance intelligence”, “The light man”, “Remedies for heartbreak”, “Goodbye depression”, “The conquest of the will”, among other hits.
The term maturity it has an indefinite, polysemic, ambiguous, blurred appearance; It’s like a bottomless pit, we all know roughly what we’re talking about, but it’s not easy to grasp its concept. It exists in all languages: reife, maturity, maturité, madurada… In German, English, French and Italian. Its social use has become widespread and we handle these terms on a daily basis, but it is not easy to give a definition because there are many components and very diverse ingredients are housed within it. Something similar happens with the term mental health: good physical, psychological and social balance in which there are no psychological symptoms that affect the normal development of the person. This definition that I now put on the table is too vague, fuzzy, imprecise and not very useful. Everything will depend on the various theories and models that we have about what personality is.
Maturity of personality is balance, autonomy, the ability to have an appropriate behavior according to the circumstances, responsibility, and knowing how to have realistic, measurable goals in life that help us grow as human beings. This definition that I propose is too complex, and perhaps not very operative, although it places us provisionally in front of this concept that is so broad and dispersed at the same time.
Another definition is this: personality maturity is knowing how to face life transitions and doing it in a positive way, which helps the growth of the main dimensions of oneself. But we see how difficult it is to do this. To define is to limit. It is about approaching this term knowing its difficulty. However, there are many expressions that are used and that go along this line: “positive mental health, affective functioning, good balance of behavior, optimal development of personality.” It is about trying to order its dimensions: physical, psychological (cognitive, behavioral and sentimental), social and cultural. And at the same time, all of them are surrounded by two notes: one static (which refers to a certain point of arrival where these variables have a good level) and another dynamic (which refers to a process in continuous movement of gains and losses, successes and errors, the ability to adapt to the changes and events experienced and, at the same time, not having known how to manage them adequately).
It can be named in different ways: psychological maturity is knowing the meaning of life and being able to travel the path that goes from the ideal that one has to its best fulfillment. We find happiness out there again: it consists in the most complete realization of oneself, knowing how to accept the limitations and mistakes of the human being. Realization and project form a unit. Fulfillment and happiness form another essential pairing.
There are two fields in maturity of special importance, the one that refers to personality and another that deals with feelings. They are very different, as we will see in the course of the next few pages, although they have common areas where one aspect enters the other and vice versa. Now we are going to refer to the first one.
Well, the first thing is to try to explain what we understand by Personality. I will express it from the outset with a simple formula: it is the way of being of each one. A set of current and potential behavior patterns, which move on three large columns: heredity, environment and biography. The hereditary part of personality is called temperament and it comes with genetic baggage. The part that comes from the environment, the type of family and education received, studies, training, friendships and a long etcetera in the same vein, is called character. And the third ingredient refers to personal history, where events, experiences, traumas, successes and failures accumulate, forming a rich and plural constellation of everything one has experienced, it is the biography.
Therefore, the personality is made of inheritance, atmosphere and Biography. It is a complicated matrix that moves between biological dispositions and learning and that gives rise to a series of overt and covert, public and private, external and internal, visible and hidden behaviors that form that way of being. Therefore, it must be made clear that personality is a lifestyle that affects the way of thinking, feeling, reacting, interpreting and behaving. This definition refers to four areas. The thought, the affectivity, the way of facing the circumstances and, finally, a concrete way of acting. Psychiatrists and psychologists are dedicated to behavior engineering. We put all our knowledge to help our patients and our readers to improve their behavior and make it healthier and more balanced.
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