| Abstract: | This work explores the potential complementarity of the sociodemographic, psychoanthropological, and sociopsychoanalytical perspectives for achieving understanding of the individual and familial roots of demographic behavior. Examination of the sociodemographic focus was stimulated and enriched by a 1986 seminar that considered theoretical and methodological problems in the integration of demographic dynamics into social research. Specific questions raised concerned the advantages and shortcomings of attitude and opinion surveys, the specifics of microsocial investigation, and the importance of the family as a mediator between larger social influences and individual behavior. Reflections on the relevance of the psychoanthropological tradition to the problems of microsocial research were influenced by a work published in the mid 1960s by the anthropologist and psychoanalyst Devereux. The affective distancing and unconscious defensive reactions of the investigator must, according to Devereux, be taken into account but also offer rich possibilities for analysis. Devereux also stressed that the study of human behavior occurs in the context of a reciprocal relation between the observer and the observed, with the observed playing a far from passive role. The presence of the observer occasions certain reactions but also is a source of complementary and relevant data for the study of behavior. A third possibility suggested by Devereux is that of approaching the unconscious of the study subjects through examination of the anxiety and other unconscious reactions of the researcher. Interpretative questionnaires, finally, are a tool of the sociopsychoanalytical tradition of potential use in demographic study. Interpretative questionnaires are applied to individuals in order to study personal psychic aspects, but their goal is the study of the socioeconomic and cultural environment that molds the personal characteristics of the respondents. |
