Questions for an interview width Demian Bucay (en breve versión castellana)
1.What are the most common problems of the contemporary man? What do you think of their psychic health?
I believe that it is very tempting to think that we live in a particularly troubled era… that the people of today have more and worse psychic problems than the people of other times in history. But I don’t think that is such the case.
I think that the emotional problems of the contemporary men and women are basically the same than that of the men and women of the last few centuries: trouble with romantic relationships, issues with the parents and conflict with the expectations of the society, continue to be at the core of human psychic suffering. However it is likely that the way in which this conflicts manifest themselves has, indeed, changed. In that sense, I believe that anxiety disorders (mostly panic attacks) are probably the most common present expression of these internal and eternal conflicts. Anyway I´m pretty sure that our understanding and treatment of the psychic suffering is better today than it was in any other historical time. Not so far ago we were treating mental illness as contagious diseases or diabolical manifestations. Psychological language and knowledge, once reserved for the very few is nowadays often popular and of everyday use. This is a great improvement.
2.What is your advice for those, who want to live a meaningful life?
I believe the search for meaning is one of the great tasks (if not the greater task) that a person can undertake in his or her life. But there is no one way of finding meaning. Some find it working for the greater good, some find it creating beautiful things, others in pursuing some kind of mission given by what they believe is a higher entity. Yet others find it in the love they can give and receive from their close ones or in discovering the mysteries or pleasures life has to offer… No one can tell us which of these is our own path. I should say anyway that I believe the quest for meaning is less a search than it is an act of creation. I mean: the idea of finding meaning suggest that the meaning is something that is already there, hidden, determined by some other external force, some kind of destiny. I find that meaning is more something that I need to create for myself and that I shape, and continue to shape, as I move forward in my life.
3.Do you consider continuing writing? Have you already got an idea for a second book?
I have written since I was a teenager. I wrote mostly short stories them, some of then even got published in young writer’s antologies. So writing has always been a part of my life and surely it will continue to be. Recently the Mexican editorial Oceano published a graphic novel called “The secret of the flying flower”, I wrote the story and a talented artist named Mauricio Gomez Morin draw the marvelous illustrations that go with it. The result, I believe, was better than I could possibly imagine. At the time I´m writing two more books: one in collaboration with my father about relationships between parents and children and another one about love and romantic relationships.
4.Who are the people that inspire you (your heros)?
I have always been inspired by the great epic stories, by heros in the most classical and (I should say) obvious ways. I always looked up to -and felt emotionally moved by- fictional characters such as Luke Skywalker, Aragorn of the Lord of the Rings or Homero´s Ulises. I understand that the things I can accomplish fall far behind of the great deeds of these heroes (I mean: is not very likely that I´ll end up saving the world), but the stories of someone that has to conquer his or her worse fears in order to stand up for what he or she believes have always been, and still are, profoundly meaningful to me. I think that the thing I find most inspiring of these tales is the transformation that these people have to overcome to get to be heroes, the fact that they didn’t started being heroes so much as they became one by virtue of what they did. Maybe I am a bit like the great argentine writer, Jorge Luis Borges, who also had a longing for great adventures and wrote: “I, unworthy of wielding a sword, must settle in writing about it”.
5.Is it difficult to be a son of such a famous father like yours?
I guess it will be more accurate to say that it was difficult. When I was younger I had a rough time thinking that I could never find an identity for myself and I will be always doomed to be perceived by others and y myself as “the son of…”. I worked really hard on this issue in a variety of ways: with myself, undergoing psychotherapy and, surprisingly enough, talking with my father about it. I would say to make things short that the conclusion I arrived was that I was in fact “the son of my father” but that was not the only thing I was. This led me to the possibility of accepting the similarities with him as well as maintaining our differences. Nowadays I would say that my father´s popularity is more an asset to me than an obstacle. It opens several doors that it would be harder to open otherwise. I need to go no further for an example than to point at my next visit to your country. I came to understand that keeping those doors open is my responsibility but my fathers “fame” undoubtedly makes it easier for me to get to the doorstep.
6.In what way your book resembles and in what way it differs from your father’s books
Both my father´s book and mine fall under the same category; one I would call “books to reflect” more than self-help books since its quite rare than we engage in a “how to…” kind of speech. Many of my father´s books have a more extensive use of the short story as a tool for self-improvement whereas mine, I believe, features “stories” that come from diverse sources: short stories as well, novel fragments, scenes from movies, personal experiences and clinical examples that I have encountered in my professional work. In terms of the content of the book I believe that we share some ideas and we disagree in others. Anyway, it is undeniable that the work of my father has a deep influence in my mine, both at the professional and personal level. ¿How it cannot be so? ¿Have I not lived with him all my childhood and youth? More so, I do find my father´s book both wise and entertaining, so the fact that mine resembles his work it is reason to be proud, and I would be pleased if people would finally think so.
7.You use film and book characters to illustrate your ideas. Why?
The truth is that I found myself doing that before I could think on why it was helpful to people: I like to read and I like movies very much so when I encountered a conflict in someone, the scenes or fragments of a book came to my head almost automatically and I felt that they could be meaningful too for the person who was sitting next to me or who would read what I was writing. I learned from my father that stories are very powerful: they allow us to find ourselves in that stories, to relate to this or that character or to the situation, but at the same time they allow us to see things a little farther away… with a different perspective, from another point of view. When we hear a story it is our story and, at the same time, it is not. This is why, I think, people have told each other stories in countless of ways since we are human. The polish and Nobel Prize writer Isaac Bashevis Singers use to say: “I am a storyteller, I have always been. When I was a child they called me a liar. Now they called me a writer. But it is just the same thing: I tell stories.” Telling stories (ancient or present, subtle or popular) is a way of renewing our collective wisdom.
8.Do you manage yourself to mirar de nuevo any problematic situation in your life?
Many times I found that way I was considering the problem was the problem itself or, at the very least, was keeping me from finding a better solution. One I remember now involves my eldest son. When he was a newly born he use to cry all afternoons more or less at the same time. He cried for hours and my wife and I took turns to take care of the child. She did it much better that I did. When I was with the baby on my arms, I did everything I could think of to get him to calm down. I sung to him, I put him on the stroller, I moved him back and forth on my arms… Nothing worked and I grew more and more anxious, which, of course, only made worse for me and for him. Until one day, talking about babys in general I heard someone say: “Imagine what it would be like to be a baby: you see colors and shapes but you cannot identify one single thing, they talk to you but you don’t understand a word… It is probably very hard.” It was true, I thought. And I was asking him to stop crying? That was, indeed, too much to ask. So, from that day on, I stopped trying to calm him down and decided to just be there for him. Try to comfort him with what was happening to him instead of trying to change it. That change of perspective made my evenings with my son a time of shared love rather than a battle between me and his cries. I felt much better and, I believe, so did he.
9.Have you considered the idea of writing a book together with your father? If so, on what topic?
As I said earlier, I am in fact writing a book together with him at the time. Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the book duels on relationships between parents and their sons and daughters. The books focuses on this bond from the perspective of one and the other and on the different dynamics that these relationships overcome as they change through time. We try to use our own experience in building a healthy and nurturing relationship as a father and son, to help others find their own way to deal with some of the conflicts that may (or should I say: that will) arise within this bond and end up learning from one another.
Redes Sociales