考研英语阅读经典试题及答案(11)

考研英语阅读经典试题及答案

(11)

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Traditionally,

the

study

of

history

has

had

fixed

boundaries

and

focal

points

—

periods,

countries,

dramatic

events,

and

great

leaders.

It

also

has had clear and firm notions of scholarly procedure: how one inquires

into a historical problem, how one presents and documents one

’

s findings,

what constitutes admissible and adequate proof.

Anyone who has followed recent historical literature can testify to the

revolution

that

is

taking

place

in

historical

studies.

The

currently

fashionable subjects come directly from the sociology catalog: childhood,

work, leisure. The new subjects are accompanied by new methods. Where

history once was 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 used

to

answer

the

question

“Why”

is

psychoanalysis,

and

its

use

has

given

rise to psychohistory.

Psychohistory

does

not

merely

use

psychological

explanations

in

historical contexts. Historians have always used such explanations when

they were appropriate and when there was sufficient evidence for them.

But this pragmatic use of psychology is not what psychohistorians intend.

They

are

committed,

not

just

to

psychology

in

general,

but to

Freudian

psychoanalysis. This commitment precludes a commitment to history as

historians have always understood it. Psychohistory derives its “facts” not

from history, the detailed records of events and their consequences, but

from psychoanalysis of the individuals who made history, and deduces its

theories not from this or that instance in their lives, but from a view of

human

nature

that

transcends

history.

It

denies

the

basic

criterion

of

historical evidence: that evidence be publicly accessible to, and therefore

assessable by, all historians. And it violates the basic tenet of historical

method: that historians be alert to the negative instances that would refute

their theses. Psychohistorians, convinced of the absolute rightness of their

own theories, are also convinced that theirs is the “deepest” explanation

of any event, that other explanations fall short of the truth.

Psychohistory is not content to violate the discipline of history (in the

sense of the proper mode of studying and writing about the past); it also

violates the past itself. It denies to the past an integrity and will of its own,

in which people acted out of a variety of motives and in which events had

a

multiplicity

of

causes

and

effects.

It

imposes

upon

the

past

the

same

determinism

that

it

imposes

upon

the

present,

thus

robbing

people

and

events of their individuality and of their complexity. Instead of respecting

the particularity of the past, it assimilates all events, past and present, into

a single deterministic schema that is presumed to be true at all times and

in all circumstances.