Consciousness raising, conversion, and de-ideologization in community psychosocial work

This paper describes a process for needs assessment in community psychosocial work and discusses its epistemological bases, stressing the importance of felt needs and the process of dialogue that has to be generated between external researchers (i.e., those from outside the community) and internal researchers (i.e., people in the community). The ideological influence that can arise from the contradiction between felt needs and normative needs is analyzed through examples from the author's research in a slum neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela. That influence is countered by prob-lematization, consciousness raising, and de-ideologization during the needs assessment process, also illustrated from circumstances which show the difference between perceiving and feeling a need. This procedure, nevertheless, does not provide a lasting solution. Constant efforts are needed to maintain the process of consciousness raising and to produce conversion as another cognitive process leading to the adoption of new points of view in the population. This counters the social pressure exerted on the community.