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🇦🇷 Argentina /Culture & Society

Gabriel Rolón: “We can reach faltacity, a happiness shaped by absence”

From La Nación · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Interview Named sources Context piece
  • Psychologist Gabriel Rolón argues that seeking happiness in the past can become a way of avoiding responsibility for the present.
  • He proposes “faltacity,” a blend of absence and happiness that accepts pain, loss and emotional wounds.
  • Rolón also rejects the idea of a perfect romantic partner and says healthy love means giving up the power to harm the other person.

Psychologist Gabriel Rolón says happiness should not be sought in an idealized past or in the promise that another person will complete us. In an interview with La Nación, he described a different possibility: “faltacity,” a blend of absence and happiness that makes room for pain, loss and wounds.

There is no happiness, there is faltacity. It is a happiness capable of embracing all absences, pain and wounds.

· Gabriel RolónThe psychologist defined his proposed concept of faltacity.

Rolón said he has always felt that life loses meaning when people begin looking for happiness in the past. For him, retreating into earlier times can amount to giving up responsibility for living in the present. He argues that happiness, if possible, must include the parts of life that are missing or painful rather than pretending they do not exist.

That idea also shapes his view of romantic relationships. Rolón rejects the fantasy of the “better half,” saying that nobody can complete another person. He compares people to oranges that have lost segments along the way. He also treats hope with professional skepticism, arguing that it can leave people waiting for events that are more magical than personal.

They are oranges that have lost segments along the way. Nobody will ever complete us.

· Gabriel RolónHe challenged the idea that romantic partners are destined to complete each other.

Rolón describes love as a “wonderful invention to deceive death for a while.” Yet he says a healthy relationship depends on consciously refusing to use power over the other person. “The person who loves you in a healthy way is the one who gives up using that power,” he said. “They never use the power they have over you to hurt you.”

The person who loves you in a healthy way is the one who gives up using that power. They never use the power they have over you to hurt you.

· Gabriel RolónRolón described his view of healthy love and the responsible use of emotional power.

He also examined family and cultural commands, which psychoanalysis calls the superego. These outside voices, he said, can obscure what people truly want. Rather than pursuing a fixed form of happiness, Rolón advocates the courage to confront one’s own desire. He described happiness as an eternal moment in which the past, the hoped-for future, present torment and fear of what lies ahead coexist.

Happiness is that moment of eternity in which what you were, what you want to be, what torments you from the past and what you fear from the future coexist.

· Gabriel RolónHe offered his concluding description of happiness as a present experience containing conflicting parts of life.
About this summary

Originally published by La Nación in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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