Catholic psychiatrist urges life balance in increasingly isolated world

ROME – Spanish psychiatrist Enrique Rojas, Director of the Spanish Institute of Psychiatrics, believes that the four cornerstones of a person’s psychology are intelligence, will, affectivity, and spirituality. Faith, he said, is what gives a person perspective to see what truly matters.

“I would never tell a patient to give up religion, because religion, when it is properly understood, is never a hindrance,” Rojas said. “Faith is good, and it is necessary. Telling a patient to leave faith aside would be like telling them to ignore culture or work. That is not to say that the church, as an institution, is not flawed. But much like I cannot give up on politics because a politician disappointed me, I cannot leave the church because a cleric disappoints me.”

Rojas is a member of Opus Dei, married and father of five – his only son died when he was two – and the author of over a dozen books, including The Challenge of Love, Making Marriage Work.

He was in Rome during Holy Week, taking part in UNIV, an annual event for university students organized by Opus Dei since 1968.

Crux spoke with him following his lecture closing the event at the Opus Dei-run Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, next to Rome’s Piazza Navona.

When he is wearing his psychiatrist hat, Rojas said he believes that faith plays an important role in the life of a person, to the point that without spirituality, “it is very difficult to maintain life, and I am talking about an open, liberal spirituality.”

“The church has three great examples of different spiritualities in the last three popes: John Paul II was a man of the masses; Benedict XVI, an intellectual; and Francis is a very complete man, very dedicated to the poor, definitely the pope of his time,” he said. “Francis is an emblematic figure, an outlier and a model of identity.”

Doubling down, he defined the Polish pope as a man of action and communication, the German pope as one “to be read,” and the Argentine pontiff as one to be “contemplated, because he has many exceptional gestures.”

Speaking about the world’s polarization and also a growing individualization, with people living in bubbles devised to bring people who think alike together and keep those who think differently separated, Rojas argued that today, “the world is more exciting than it has ever been, but also as terrible as ever.”

“What is curious is that the means have multiplied, but the ends have been lost,” Rojas said. “There are more and more means, such as the cell phone, which is a wonderful tool of communication that has become one of isolation. There are a lot of people who have tied their work to their phones. But also people whose job does not depend on their cell phones, but who, because they work for instance at a multinational company with different working hours, suddenly find themselves working all the time.”

We live in a society that is very fast paced, that is at the same time very superficial but also full of opportunities, he said. The problem is that people are “lost, they are not clear about where they come from and where they are going,” and too many no longer even care to ask these questions.

“Hence the importance of having an identity model, an outline of someone inspirational whom we would like to resemble when we grow,” he said. “There are three ‘educators’ of identity: the professor, the teacher, and the witness. The professor teaches a subject; the teacher teaches lessons that do not come in the book; the witness is a model of identity that we would like to resemble, an example of coherence and life. Today there are many professors, few teachers and few witnesses.”

This becomes evident, Rojas said, in journalism, with too many news outlets focusing on the bad, particularly those who are broken, such as actors who ruin their careers by being drunk on set or singers who abuse drugs, or famous couples that split up following an infidelity. Famous people, he argued, are less and less witnesses, because those who would make good role models don’t garner the same level of attention, neither for the media nor for the readers.

Asked about what are, in his experience, the keys to reach a successful outcome in life, he spoke about having a balanced personality and a coherent and realistic life project that includes love, work, culture, and friendship.

“Let me give you a marine metaphor: How do you build a boat and steer it? How do you keep it afloat? And how do you make sure it reaches port?” Rojas asked. “The boat is the personality, which needs to be balanced, not aiming for perfection but maturity. The life project is what keeps the boat afloat, and it has to be both coherent and realistic, and it has to include love, work, culture, and friendship.”

These two things are what lead the boat to port.

“Absolute happiness is a chimera and lies in the imagination,” he said. “We have to aspire to relative happiness, which could be defined as a life achieved, with the person being able to make the most of their existence, especially in two areas that are the main pillars: Love and work, affective life and professional life.”

Rojas places emotional and professional life on the same level, arguing that happiness consists in love and work, “in loving work and working with love.”