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  3. For much of its history, psychology has seemed obsessed with human failings

For much of its history, psychology has seemed obsessed with human failings

游客2025-03-28  17
问题     For much of its history, psychology has seemed obsessed with human failings and pathology. The very idea of psychotherapy, first formalized by Freud, rests on a view of human beings as troubled creatures in need of repair. Freud himself was profoundly pessimistic about human nature, which he felt was governed by deep, dark drives that we could hardly control. The scientists who followed developed a model of human life that seemed to many mechanical if not robotic: humans were passive beings harshly shaped by the stimuli and the rewards and punishments that surrounded them.
    After World War Ⅱ, psychologists tried to explain how so many ordinary citizens could have agreed with fascism, and did work symbolized in the 1950 classic The Authoritarian Personality by T.W. Adorno, et al. Social psychologists followed on. Some of the most famous experiments proved that normal folk could become coldly insensitive to suffering when obeying "legitimate" orders or cruelly aggressive when playing the role of prison guard.
    A watershed moment arrived in 1998, when University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman, in his presidential address to the American Psychological Association, urged psychology to "turn toward understanding and building the human strengths to complement our emphasis on healing damage." That speech launched today’s positive psychology movement.
    Though not denying humanity’s flaws, the new positive psychologists recommend focusing on people’s strengths and virtues as a point of departure. Rather than analyze the psychopathology underlying alcoholism, for example, positive psychologists might study the toughness of those who have managed a successful recovery--for example, through organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous. Instead of viewing religion as a delusion and a support, as did Freud, they might identify the mechanisms through which a spiritual practice like meditation enhances mental and physical health. Their lab experiments might seek to define not the conditions that induce wicked behavior, but those that foster generosity, courage, creativity, and laughter.
    Seligman’s idea quickly caught on. The Gallup Organization founded the Gallup Positive Psychology Institute to sponsor scholarly work in the field. In 1999, 60 scholars gathered for the first Gallup Positive Psychology Summit; two years later, the conference went international, and ever since has drawn about 400 attendees annually. [br] According to Freud, human nature ______.
选项 A、was positive on the whole
B、was controlled by secret desires
C、was inclined to control other people
D、was becoming worse and worse
答案 B
解析
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