How did you decide to become a
psychologist? On the one hand, by vocation. I get along emotionally and I think I know how to see people. But like everyone who studies psychology, behind it is a personal story. I went to heal the wounds to the psychology faculty. And I've also done this book because of that, because I suffered a lot of bullying in teenagers: because I was a queer, bisexual, pen, sensitive child -- basically because I was a failed man. That was severely punished in my adolescence and I went to college trying to heal. But the truth is, I found other things.

What? In the faculty and in the curricula a very canonical subject appears, according to the normative ideal
of women and virility. The presumption of heterosexuality prevails, not even the LGTB collective is mentioned, and the human being presents himself from a very measurable and objectivable perspective, ignoring other human aspects such as desire, unconscious and other non-normative aspects. Furthermore, there is no political analysis of the subject.

The latter is one of the points he criticizes in the book. Yes. It is about finding an internal truth of the subject, and at most one takes into account the family context and relationships, but it is not analyzed at all how structural violence, such as machismo, LGTBIQphobia, misogyny, classism, racism, etc., configure these structures that condition our subjectivity and self-esteem. In addition, to prove that psychology is a very scientific issue, you want to give an image of neutrality, but that doesn't exist. They sell you a neutral psychology, but the underlying values are
not neutral but hegemonic, they drive a concrete ideology, the dominant ideology, which is considered normal. But if staff are political, psychology must also be political. The psychology of the faculty was very measurable, canonical, heterogeneous, white, capacitive, very normative, and it's very difficult for someone to feel identified in such a psychology.

Once the studies were completed, it was incorporated
immediately. Yes, I left school and started working in social services, while still studying: psychoanalysis and systemic family therapy.

Did you find other answers there? In the case of psychoanalysis it is less normative: there is talk of the unconscious, of desire, of the opacity of desire… But once again it is immersed in a totally heterogeneous framework. And the same thing in family therapy. The two areas provided me with tools to work as a psychotherapist, but I always felt that this thorn was talking
about very canonical subjects and that there is a great diversity in the world – linked to gender, sexual orientation, race, social class…–, and that we do not work anywhere.

Moreover, psychology and psychiatry, instead of favoring this diversity, have served to perpetuate the supposed normality and stigmatize everything outside it. Psychology and psychiatry have been one of the main strata of pathology and have contributed to the implementation of the rule. This empire of norm refers not only to gender, sexual orientation or race, but also to all other levels: how should the relationships of friendship, partner,
sexual reproduction be… It is established that all this must be done in a certain way, and that norm obliges us all. However, the more flexible these standards are, the freer they will be and the fewer needs we have to go to therapy. Psychology is a great place to work all of this, but it does the opposite. I've spent 15 years working on social services, and I've learned a lot, but if you want to complain a little bit about psychotherapy, and you're in the institutional realm, forget about it.

Isn't that possible? I have not succeeded, and I have worked for many years in social services, in Toledo and in Madrid. There is often
no specific will to stigmatize, the truth is that this diversity does not exist. Genograms are always very binary, the family is biological… When talking about other family networks, for example, without consanguinity, the head explodes.

You quit working in social services. I asked for an exemption. On the one hand, I worked in social services and then I had a private consultation. In 2018, I could no
longer, I could neither continue nor identify with my psychological practice. And well, since I had a private consultation, because I had the opportunity to take advantage of the leave, surely many others do not.

And he started studying. Yes, I asked for leave, I went to the consultation and I went to study. Instead of limiting myself to psychology, I started studying philosophy, black feminisms, queer theories, sentence theories… And I saw that in these areas of knowledge I had a
lot of tools to work my psychotherapeutic practice and make it queer.

Why aren't these tools used in psychology? There is a market niche policy, that is psychology, another philosophy, that division seems terrible
and very neoliberal to me. Everything is classified, and it's not about classifying knowledge, but using all the tools available to improve people's mental health.

Within psychology, there is
a current that looks specifically at the LGBTIQ+ community. Confirmative psychology LGTBI. What is that and how does it emerge? A minority sector in psychology was tired, because belonging to the LGTB community did not know what prejudices you would find in the consultation, whether you would try to channel it to the norm, whether you would try to “cure” it, what is known as conversion therapies. Then, this minority sector began to boost affirmative LGTB psychology, which, first of all, showed that common psychology was not meeting a need and that all these subjectivities were more vulnerable.

However, he considers that affirmative psychology has limitations. I was reassured by the criticism of confirmatory psychology in the book, because it has been useful to me, and because it has given me some instruments, even if I am not gay – and that is one of the criticisms I make of it, which is situated in
a very gay, cis, white framework. But I've done it in a bid to improve, and I think we're moving forward as critical and self-critical.

What are the drawbacks of this trend? I think it's partly good, because it serves to turn around the stigma of sexual orientation, and that's very important: those of us who have been told 20 million times to the crowd know that perfectly. But of course, in addition to sexual orientation, we're more things. And I think if we want to work psychology from a political perspective, it would be
interesting to consider intersectionality, and that confirmatory psychology would be much stronger if we didn't just address one axis of domination or privilege. For a while it may be useful, but once you get over that, I think you're a little bit bogged down and eventually you get petrified back into a concrete identity.

You, therefore, propose queer psychotherapy. How do you understand it? For me, working from the queer point of view implies realizing that we are within a
regime of normality, and the term queer has to do precisely with the flexibilization of the rigidity of those boxes, that we play with that rigidity, that we do not remain petrified in one box, and that all our energy, all our power of desire, do not adapt to pre-established molds – and there are many ways: what is friendship? I'm clear that a lot of people are coming to therapy because of that, because it doesn't conform to the rules.

Identity, labels, boxes -- they have two aspects. They can serve to fight for our rights, but they can also become cages. It is essential for
me to live on the borders — that is what I value, everyone has to see what is worth, of course. I believe that labels can be useful for presenting, for making claims, etc., but if they are taken too seriously they can be dangerous. Human beings are contradictory, ambivalent, we do not share a rigid norm. We really like to explain the world in a completely orderly way, but we're not that. We can sort it out to a certain extent, but then, because of our unconscious, we want the fourth-floor neighborhood, and it's all going to stop. So I think we can be freer to fuse or petrify with a label. For me that is living at borders. Not everything is worth, of course, I know where I want to be, but with a little flexibility.

Another key to queer psychotherapy is the relationship between psychologist and patient. In addition to psychology, I think it also happens in medicine, which often does not allow patients to participate in their treatment. Instead, if we want to work queer psychotherapy, the path would
be different. All right, the psychologist has his knowledge, but we're going to build a story between the two, to see what comes out, building together, and not from verticality, I think it's very important to do it, so that the other person doesn't feel pressured and annulled and feels recognition. I think we have always had a problem there. Many doctors and therapists feel that they lose their place if they put themselves in a more horizontal position, and I think it's quite the opposite. I believe that the patient will feel much more satisfied and the process will be much more constructive and positive.

One of the criticisms I have heard about therapy in my environment is that concerns are individualized and the collective level is abandoned. What do you think of that criticism? I agree, but I do not believe that both sides
are mutually exclusive. I believe that individual consultation will have a limited capacity if it does not compel the community, because if it is worked on therapy it does not pollute your life and is encapsulated… I see problems with that. On the other hand, I believe that the collectivization of wounds and knowledge is absolutely curative. So I've written the book in part, and lately we've started to bring together a number of psychotherapists, because we've been alone, and from there everything is very individualistic and neoliberal, and our progress is limited. That said, it is true that you are not always at the moment of collectivization and that you also need a more individual or more intimate space. And vice versa: you're not always at the right time for individual therapy. So I think it's important to take the collective aspect into account, but I don't think that if it's not collective it won't be. It depends on the person. For me, good individual therapy will lead to collectivization along the same path as therapy.

It seems that lately there is more mental health, how do you see the situation? There is now much talk about mental health, but the situation has always been very serious. It will also depend on each
community, but in Madrid the public health system is in very poor condition and in mental health, let us not say. Now there are political groups that talk about the issue, that's OK, and they're going to take action, like hiring more psychologists or starting a phone of hope. But, in my opinion, that is only scarce.

The problem is structural. I think so. We're not taught emotional education at school. I think it is very good to
hire psychologists, but that will not solve the problem, psychologists are not sorcerers. Ask miracles for the miracle. We have to change structures, social and educational, but not only in schools, but in schools, where values are developed, and in school we do not talk about emotional content, racism, etc.