Gabriel Rolón, psychoanalyst: 'Life becomes much more luminous and attractive when one makes an effort'

Argentine psychoanalyst and writer Gabriel Rolón believes that external pressures significantly hinder individuals from identifying and fulfilling their own desires. In an interview with Luis Novaresio on LN+, Rolón, author of "La felicidad," explained the psychological mechanisms that create a disconnect between a person's will and their true aspirations.

Rolón stated that it is difficult to know what one truly desires because "so many things" interpose themselves between the self and desire. The primary obstacle, he noted, are the desires of others – "those voices. Those mandates, what was expected of us." He argued that people live under the weight of discourses that do not belong to them, becoming "excentric to ourselves" due to constant external opinions.

According to Rolón, personal effort is the fundamental driving force for transforming reality. "Life becomes much more luminous and much more attractive when one makes an effort," he asserted. He values continuous formation and learning as ways to enrich existence and "eroticize thought." Rolón elaborated that the voices of parents and society, dictating how one should be, whom to love, or whether to study, often obscure genuine choice and lead to feelings of disappointment and guilt when individuals perceive they are failing to meet these external expectations.

This internal conflict, Rolón explained, causes individuals to feel detached from their own center. The process of self-knowledge, therefore, involves discerning one's real longings from the impositions of their environment. He pointed out that people often discover their current goals are reflections of what their close circle expected, rather than internal drives. Rolón concluded that while everyone carries expectations from others, fortunate individuals receive "a good desire" from their predecessors, but cautioned against parents imposing their unfulfilled ambitions onto their children, urging them instead to allow their children to discover their own desires.