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  3. Traditionally, the study of history has had fixed boundaries and focal points—periods, countries, dramatic events, and great lea

Traditionally, the study of history has had fixed boundaries and focal points—periods, countries, dramatic events, and great lea

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问题   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 psycho historians 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. Psycho historians, 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.  
It can be inferred from the passage that the methods used by psychohistorians probably prevent them from______.
选项 A、presenting their material in chronological order
B、producing a one-sided picture of an individual’s personality and motivations
C、uncovering alternative explanations that might cause them to question their own conclusions
D、offering a consistent interpretation of the impact of personality on historical events
答案C
解析 本题为推断题。原文第三段的最后部分的陈述(And it violates the basic tenet of historical method that historians be alert to the negative instances that would refute their theses．Psycho historians，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．)告诉了我们：传统的历史学家必须对那些能够驳倒自己立论的反面的事例要很敏感，心理历史研究的方法打破这一常规，坚信自己的理论是绝对正确的，坚信自己的理论是对任何事件的“最深刻”的解释，其他的解释均缺乏事实依据。据此，我们可以推断出：心理历史学家们由于对自己的理论的绝对坚信而不可能对自己的结论提出质疑。所以，C为最佳答案。其他几个答案均与以上的陈述相矛盾。
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