António Fonseca is a lecturer and researcher at the Faculty of Education and Psychology of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Porto. He specialised in the field of Ageing Psychology and has been a consultant for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation since 2016. At Católica, he played a decisive role in the creation of the Psychology degree programme. To his students, he seeks to convey that “a psychologist is not shaped only by technical knowledge, but also through the way they look at people.”
Are we living in a society disconnected from its older people?
I think so. We live in a society where usefulness serves as a kind of barometer and, very often, older people are quickly considered to be of little use. When we reduce usefulness solely to the productive dimension, older people end up being left out of our priorities. On the other hand, I am also concerned by the idea that older people are only valued as consumers. Today there is an entire market aimed at older people, with supplements, care homes and services, based on the assumption that older people necessarily need all of that. And perhaps they do not. Perhaps they need far less in order to live well and fulfil themselves as people.
You have a great deal of contact with younger generations. How do you feel they view ageing today?
I think increasingly with interest. Psychology students, who are the ones I know best, now leave university with the idea that an older person is not merely a problem from a social, economic or healthcare perspective, but someone with potential. Someone with psychological, social and cognitive potential that can still be developed. That does not mean age is irrelevant, but it is not necessarily limiting. I think young people are beginning to understand that. I often say in class: “there are two kinds of old people - your grandparents, for whom you feel affection and esteem; and then ‘the others’.” What really needs to change is precisely that perspective. “The others” also deserve the same attention, respect and professionalism as our own relatives. Fortunately, this growing interest is also visible in students’ choices. Every year there are students leaving here intending to work with older people, in care homes, hospitals, continuing care or palliative care, but also in community settings. The Faculty has contributed to this shift, encouraging people to see older adults as a population group like any other, and affirming this as an important field within Psychology.
When you think about your childhood, what is the first idea that comes to mind?
Freedom! I had a very free childhood. I was born and raised in Ul, in the municipality of Oliveira de Azeméis. My grandparents were farmers and my maternal grandfather, with whom I was very close, was also a miller, so I would go with him to the fields and the mills.
As a young person, what did you want to be when you grew up?
As a child, I thought about becoming a chef or an orchestra conductor. My mother cooks extremely well (Freud would easily explain that interest) and, from a very early age, I was also deeply interested in music, although I never managed to play an instrument as well as I wanted to. I learned piano, but without much success. Until I was 11 or 12, those were the areas I felt closest to. Afterwards, I always felt divided between a more office-based profession and a professional life outdoors. I think I would also have been quite happy as a farmer or landscape architect.
And how did Psychology come into the picture?
Psychology emerged during secondary school. At the time, many students considered Medicine, and I did too, especially Psychiatry, but Psychology began to interest me when I took the subject at school. We are talking about the early 1980s, when practically nobody in Portugal really knew what a psychologist was. I did not know anyone in the field, but I became very interested in the subject. There were some Psychology books published by the Gulbenkian Foundation, and I remember writing them a letter asking for those books so I could deepen my studies. There was no internet and it was not easy to access that kind of material while living outside the big cities. The most curious thing is that the Gulbenkian Foundation sent me the books free of charge. At the time, I never imagined that decades later I would end up working there.
“The most challenging thing is trying to understand a reality we have not yet experienced”
You eventually specialised in ageing. Why?
The study of ageing, from a psychological perspective, really began in Portugal with my generation. One of the first people to take a genuine interest in this area was Professor Constança Paúl, who later became my PhD supervisor. Around the year 2000, a group of people began developing this field in Portugal. What interested me was precisely the fact that it was an almost unexplored area.
We often forget that development continues throughout life…
Exactly. During my time at university, the concept of development practically ended at the end of adolescence. Nobody spoke about adult development or the development of older people.
What is the greatest challenge in studying ageing?
In the field where I work, the greatest challenge is trying to understand a reality we have not yet experienced. I am moving towards old age, but I am not old yet. So, we are trying to understand cognitive, relational and even sexuality-related ways of functioning that we have never directly experienced.
Moreover, as we age, we become increasingly different from one another. Individual variability increases greatly with age. I often say that we never really know “old age”; we only ever know one older person at a time. In other words, there is no single pattern. And when there is one, it is often due to illness, particularly dementia. People with dementia tend to share more similar characteristics with one another than people ageing without neurocognitive disease.
“It is a constant ambivalence between wanting to live longer and, at the same time, rejecting much of what that implies”
What does ‘ageing well’ mean?
For me, ageing well is above all about maintaining control over one’s own life. Of course, health, money and family are important, but by themselves they are not enough. There are people with significant financial resources who suffer greatly psychologically, and healthy people who struggle enormously with everyday matters. Ageing well means being able to maintain control over one’s life - socially, cognitively and relationally - and over whatever may threaten that balance over time.
Are we afraid of ageing?
We all want to grow old, but at the same time we are afraid of being old, especially because of the consequences associated with ageing. That paradox has always existed and still does. It is a constant ambivalence between wanting to live longer and, at the same time, rejecting much of what that implies. But this does not happen only with ageing. It also happens in other stages of life. There are people who deeply wish to become parents and then, once they are, wonder how they ever wanted it in the first place. In ageing, however, there is an inevitability: either we age, or we never get there.
When did your connection to the Católica begin?
I joined Católica in 2003, when Professor Joaquim Azevedo decided to bring the Institute of Education, which already existed in Lisbon, to Porto. At the time, it focused mainly on master’s degrees and postgraduate programmes in Education. Discussions also began around creating a Psychology undergraduate degree, because Católica did not yet offer one. We felt there were conditions to move forward in Porto and ended up creating what became the first Psychology degree programme at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa. I was closely involved in that initial process. We had to create almost everything from scratch. For a decade, I held several roles, including director, undergraduate and master’s coordinator, and director of the Research Centre. The Faculty of Education and Psychology that exists today is very much the result of that initial work developed by Professor Joaquim Azevedo, myself and a group of people who have been connected to the Faculty since its beginning.
You are also a consultant for the Gulbenkian Foundation. What does that work involve?
I have been a consultant for the Gulbenkian Foundation since 2016, in the field of ageing. My work involves following the Foundation’s initiatives in this area and maintaining contact with the organisations involved. This gives me access to hundreds of organisations across the country. In practice, it allows me to have a very broad perspective of what is happening on the ground, almost like a form of ecological psychology applied to ageing and support structures for older people.
This work runs parallel to my activity at the Faculty, but it is highly complementary. What I learn in the field I then bring into classes, research and student training. It has also created internship opportunities for students in institutions with which I work through the Foundation.
“We need to educate our gaze, so we do not fall into absolute truths before exploring, before knowing, before interpreting”
What is the main message you like to leave with your students?
The main message is that a psychologist is not formed solely through technical knowledge, but also through the way they look at people. That is the most important thing. A psychologist must have a very particular perspective on human phenomena, one that is distinct from that of a doctor, social worker or lawyer. It is a perspective of understanding, but also of critical understanding. In Psychology, normal and pathological do not exist from the outset. Neither do right and wrong. We need to educate our gaze so we do not fall into absolute truths before exploring, before knowing, before interpreting. Human experience, when properly explored, allows us to go beyond symptoms and surface appearances, and understand deeper causes, reasons and motivations. It is the development of that gaze that I enjoy working on with students.
How do you train that perspective?
Precisely by exploring what lies beneath the surface.
Which works of Portuguese literature would you recommend on the topic of ageing?
A Máquina de Fazer Espanhóis, by Valter Hugo Mãe, and Misericórdia, by Lídia Jorge. They are both very interesting books about ageing, especially in institutional settings. Then there is also Vergílio Ferreira, whose work is highly relevant and includes several books that richly explore the experience of ageing.
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
I return a little to my childhood. I enjoy freedom, the outdoors, nature and the countryside. I like walking, not necessarily very far away, but simply being in nature. I have walked the Camino de Santiago several times through different routes. I also enjoy gardening, as a way of exploring my landscape architect side that never became a profession. I like planting, taking care of things, assuming a kind of farmer’s role that I never pursued professionally. In the end, in my free time, I end up living out those dimensions that always remained as possibilities.