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Social Psychology and Latin American Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2022

Margaret Todaro Williams
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Many social scientists working today in Latin American studies are skeptical, if not hostile, to the notion of incorporating psychological theory and methodology in their research. Some contend that studies of individual personality formation, while perhaps inherently fascinating and certainly of professional interest to the psychologist, contribute little to our greater understanding of Latin American society. Social behavior and social systems, others argue, are wholly explainable in terms of structural-materialist-power factors. Consequently, there is no need for a social psychological approach. Still others view this type of orientation as essentially conservative, an effort to attribute Latin American problems (for example, underdevelopment) to the existence of a “Latin American mind” or a “Latin American personality” (through generally pejorative categories, such as the inability to exert onself).

Type
Topical Review
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , Spring 1974 , pp. 141 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © 1974 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

*

I am indebted to the Social Science Research Council for a year of training in social psychology through the Council's Research Training Fellowship. This paper represents an assessment of this training in relation to Latin American studies. I also wish to thank David Lopez (sociology, UCLA), Norman Miller (psychology, USC), Susan Kaufman Purcell (political science, UCLA), and James Wilkie (history, UCLA), for their careful reading of the manuscript and for their valuable comments. This paper was delivered at the Latin American Studies Association meeting in Madison, Wisconsin, on May 3, 1973.

References

Footnotes

1. Irving Louis Horowitz, Three Worlds of Development (N.Y.: 1966), p. 330. Chapter 10, “The Mental Set of Developing Man,” speaks directly to the question of the psychological aspects of colonialism and development.

2. Oscar Lewis, Life in a Mexican Village: Tepoztlán Restudied (Urbana, Ill.: 1951), pp. 428–429.

3. Florestan Fernandes utilizes the insights of social psychology to answer this question in The Negro in Brazilian Society (N.Y.: 1969). See especially chapter 4, pp. 187–233.

4. Gordon Allport, “The Historical Background of Modern Social Psychology,” in Gardner Lindzey, ed., Handbook of Social Psychology (Reading, Mass.: 1969), v. I, p. 3.

5. The trend in personality theory, particularly in psychoanalytic personality theory, is away from the defensive functions of the ego toward studies of its synthetic, integrative, adaptive functions. Ego psychology today represents the increasing concern of psychoanalysts with ego processes, social forces, and interpersonal relations. For an elaboration on recent trends in psychoanalysis, see Calvin S. Hall and Gardner Lindzey, “The Relevance of Freudian Psychology and Related Viewpoints for the Social Sciences,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, v. 1, 2nd ed. (Reading, Mass.: 1969), especially pages 277–284.

6. See Chapter 7, “The Eight Ages of Man,” in Erik Erikson's Childhood and Society (N.Y., 1963), and his book Identity and the Life Cycle (N.Y.: 1959), for a fuller explanation of his developmental concepts in ego psychology.

7. The “projective” techniques are so named because they elicit individual projections onto a series of ambiguous stimuli. The individual, in response to indeterminant stimuli, “projects” samples of behavior, revealing inner states or characteristic processes of adjustment. Gardner Lindzey, in Projective Techniques and Cross-Cultural Research (N.Y.: 1961), has summarized and classified the various kinds of projective techniques that have been used. Attitudinal surveys are not new and their use continues. See for example, Maurice Zeitlin, Revolutionary Politics and the Cuban Working Class (Princeton: 1967).

8. The analysis of dreams, and the semistructured clinical interview also hold considerable methodological promise. Since time constraints and the unwillingness of informants to undergo intensive interviews hamper the interpretation of unconscious materials, Latin Americanists may find it more feasible to interpret the manifest content of dreams rather than deeply unconscious latent material. Dorothy Eggan proposed the use of manifest content of dreams to show personality integration and cultural attitudes in “The Manifest Content of Dreams: A Challenge to Social Science,” American Anthropologist, no. 54, 1952. David Foulkes discusses the instability of dream research in The Psychology of Sleep (N.Y.: 1966).

9. Some examples include Ozzie Simmons, “Ambivalence and the Learning of Drinking Behavior in a Peruvian Community,” American Anthropologist, no. 62, 1960; George Foster, Tzintzuntzan: Peasants in a Changing World (Boston: 1967); Romain and Kimball Romney, The Mixtecans of Juxlajuaca (N.Y.: 1969); William Mangin, “Mental Health and Migration to Cities: A Peruvian Case,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, no. 84, 1960; Oscar Lewis, La Vida (N.Y.: 1965).

10. The names of Octavio Paz, El Laberinto de la Soledad (México: 1950) and Samuel Ramos, El Perfil del Hombre y la Cultura en México (México, 1934), come to mind immediately in this regard. See also the works of the Mexican psychoanalysts Ancieto Aramoni, Psicoanálisis de la Dinámica de un Pueblo (México: 1960), and Francisco González Pineda, El Mexicano: Su Dinámica Psicosocial (México: 1961). North American analysts Erich Fromm and Michael Maccoby also have turned their attention to Mexico in Social Character in a Mexican Village (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:1970).

11. The focus of many of these works is political; for example, Ted Robert Gurr, “Psychological Factors in Civil Violence,” World Politics, v. 20, January 1968, and Kalman Silvert, “Some Psychocultural Factors in the Politics of Conflict and Conciliation,” in Francisco José Moreno and Barbara Mitrani, eds., Conflict and Violence in Latin American Politics (N.Y.: 1971). Kalman Silvert defines nationalism partially in social psychological terms in Expectant Peoples (N.Y.: 1963). Still other social scientists have drawn on social psychology in their treatments of aspects of modernization and economic development; for example, Joseph Kahl, The Measurement of Modernism: A Study of Values in Brazil and Mexico (Austin: 1968) and Everett E. Hagen, On the Theory of Social Change (Cambridge: 1962).

12. George A. DeVos and Arthur A. Hippler, “Cultural Psychology: Comparative Studies of Human Behavior,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, v. 4, 2nd ed. (Reading, Mass.: 1969), p. 365.

13. Emanuel de Kadt, “Religion, the Church, and Social Change in Brazil,” in Claudio Véliz, ed., The Politics of Conformity in Latin America, (N.Y.: 1967), pp. 196–197.

14. DeVos and Hippler, p. 362.

15. Hall and Lindzey, pp. 281–282.

16. Some of the more useful general works in the field of political socialization include Fred I. Greenstein, Children and Politics (New Haven: 1969), Kenneth Langton, Political Socialization (N.Y.: 1969), and Roberta Sigel, ed., Learning About Politics: A Reader in Political Socialization (N.Y.: 1970). Political socialization studies in Latin America have been done by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture (Princeton: 1963); Robert E. Scott, “Mexico: The Established Revolution,” in Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton: 1969), especially pp. 347–371; Patricia Kasschau, “The Development of Political Cynicism in Young Mexican Children,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Sociology, University of Southern California, 1972. Richard Fagen, in The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (Stanford: 1969), touches on political socialization issues, particularly the Cuban attempt to create an attitudinally changed “new socialist man” through strictly behavioral changes.

17. David O. Sears, “Political Behavior,” in Handbook of Social Psychology, v. 5, 2nd ed., (Reading, Mass.: 1969) pp. 415–416. This long review essay deals with all aspects of the psychology of public opinion and electoral behavior, but heavily emphasizes the literature on political change during the life cycle.

18. Allport, pp. 59–63.

19. Margarita Gangotena, “The Denial of the Peasant Heritage,” unpublished manuscript, University of Minnesota, June 1971, p. 8. I wish to thank Professor Stuart Schwartz of the History Department, University of Minnesota, for sending me a copy of this paper.

20. This has been true since Harold Lasswell made his pioneering studies of the relationships between personality and politics in the 1930s. See his Psychopathology and Politics (Chicago: 1930). A recent survey article on “personality-politics” research is Fred I. Greenstein, “Systematic Inquiry into Personality and Politics: Introduction and Overview,” Journal of Social Issues, v. 24 (1968), pp. 1–14.

21. Including interviews of Plínio Salgado (Brasília, 4/12/68); Loureiro Junior (São Paulo, 12/1/67); Mario Sombra (Rio, 7/22/68); Geofredo da Silva Telles (São Paulo, 5/20/68); Gumercindo Rocha Dorea (Rio, 3/14/68); and João Scantimburgo (São Paulo, 4/17/68).

22. Interview, Plínio Corrêa de Oliveira (São Paulo, 12/3/67). Catolicismo, the group's newspaper, which sells over 25,000 copies per month, reiterates this theme endlessly.

23. Custodio de Viveiros, O Sonhodo filósofo integralista (Rio: 1935), p. 96.

24. Plínio Corrêa de Oliveira, A Liberdade da Ingreja no estado communista (São Paulo: 1964), p. 11. Over 136,000 copies of this work have been published and distributed in eight languages.

25. Alex Inkeles, “National Character and Modern Political Systems,” in F.L.K. Hsu, ed., Psychological Anthropology (Homewood, Ill.: 1961), p. 193.

26. Allport, p. 68.

27. Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (N.Y.: 1970). See chapter 16, “Future Shock, the Psychological Dimension.”