2017英语专八阅读100篇高级篇附答案解析（99）

2017英语专八阅读100篇高级篇附答案解析（99）

　　Traditionally, the study of history has had fixed boundaries and focalpoints — periods, countries, dramatic events, and great leaders. It also has hadclear and firm notions of scholarly procedure: how one inquires into ahistorical problem, how one presents and documents one’s findings, what constitutesadmissible and adequate proof.

　　Anyone who has followed recent historical literature can testify to therevolution that is taking place in historical studies. The currentlyfashionable subjects come directly from the sociology catalog: childhood, work,leisure. The new subjects are accompanied by new methods. Where history oncewas primarily narrative, it is now entirely analytic. The old questions “What happened?” and “How did it happen?” have given way to the question “Why did it happen?” Prominent among the methods usedto answer the question “Why” is psychoanalysis, and its use has given rise to psychohistory.

　　Psychohistory does not merely use psychological explanations inhistorical contexts. Historians have always used such explanations when theywere appropriate and when there was sufficient evidence for them. But thispragmatic use of psychology is not what psychohistorians intend. They arecommitted, not just to psychology in general, but to Freudian psychoanalysis.This commitment precludes a commitment to history as historians have alwaysunderstood it. Psychohistory derives its “facts” not from history, the detailedrecords of events and their consequences, but from psychoanalysis of the individualswho made history, and deduces its theories not from this or that instance intheir lives, but from a view of human nature that transcends history. It deniesthe basic criterion of historical evidence: that evidence be publiclyaccessible to, and therefore assessable by, all historians. And it violates thebasic tenet of historical method: that historians be alert to the negativeinstances that would refute their theses. Psychohistorians, convinced of theabsolute rightness of their own theories, are also convinced that theirs is the“deepest” explanation of any event, thatother explanations fall short of the truth.

　　Psychohistory is not content to violate the discipline of history ; it alsoviolates the past itself. It denies to the past an integrity and will of itsown, in which people acted out of a variety of motives and in which events hada multiplicity of causes and effects. It imposes upon the past the samedeterminism that it imposes upon the present, thus robbing people and events oftheir individuality and of their complexity. Instead of respecting theparticularity of the past, it assimilates all events, past and present, into asingle deterministic schema that is presumed to be true at all times and in allcircumstances.

　　1. Which of the following best states the main point of the text?

　　[A] The approach of psychohistorians to historical study is currently invogue even though it lacks the rigor and verifiability of traditionalhistorical method.

　　[B] Traditional historians can benefit from studying the techniques andfindings of psychohistorians.

　　[C] Areas of sociological study such as childhood and work are of littleinterest to traditional historians.

　　[D] The psychological assessment of an individual’s behavior and attitudes is moreinformative than the details of his or her daily life.

　　2. The author mentions which of the following as a characteristic of thepractice of psychohistorians?

　　[A] The lives of historical figures are presented in episodic rather thannarrative form.

　　[B] Archives used by psychohistorians to gather material are notaccessible to other scholars.

　　[C] Past and current events are all placed within the same deterministicdiagram.

　　[D] Events in the adult life of a historical figure are seen to be moreconsequential than are those in the childhood of the figure.

　　3. The author of the text suggests that psychohistorians view historyprimarily as

　　[A] a report of events, causes, and effects that is generally accepted byhistorians but which is, for the most part, unverifiable.

　　[B] an episodic account that lacks cohesion because records of the roleof childhood, work, and leisure in the lives of historical figures are rare.

　　[C] an uncharted sea of seemingly unexplainable events that have meaningonly when examined as discrete units.

　　[D] a record the way in which a closed set of immutable psychologicallaws seems to have shaped events.

　　4. The author of the text puts the word “deepest” inquotation marks most probably in order to

　　[A] signal her reservations about the accuracy of psychohistorians’ claims for their work.

　　[B] draw attention to a contradiction in the psychohistorians’ method.

　　[C] emphasize the major difference between the traditional historians’ method and that ofpsychohistorians.

　　[D] disassociate her opinion of the psychohistorians’ claims from her opinion of theirmethod.

　　5. In presenting her analysis, the author does all of the followingEXCEPT.

　　[A] Make general statements without reference to specific examples.

　　[B] Describe some of the criteria employed by traditional historians.

　　[C] Question the adequacy of the psychohistorians’ interpretation of events.

　　[D] Point out inconsistencies in the psychohistorians’ application of their methods.

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