PrepTest 123, Section 3, Question 13
By Brandon Beaver | Published October 29, 2024
Type: Strengthen
Difficulty:
Explanations
Start with the conclusion: Cognitive psychotherapy is likely to be more effective at helping patients overcome psychological problems than are forms of psychotherapy that focus on changing unconscious beliefs and desires. Why does the author think that’s true? Because cognitive psychotherapy focuses on changing a patient’s conscious beliefs, and only conscious beliefs are under the patient’s direct conscious control.
See the issue? What does that “reason” have to do with anything? To strengthen this argument, there needs to be a premise that explains why that reason makes cognitive psychotherapy the most effective.
A
This weakens! Cognitive psychotherapy focuses on conscious beliefs.
B
Aha! This explains why it’s effective to focus on patients’ beliefs that are within their conscious control. The argument just dropped that fact in there without adding an additional fact, like B, to explain why that first fact supports the argument.
C
That’s great, but again, how are the conscious beliefs relevant?
D
Maybe all other forms of psychotherapy focus on unconscious beliefs, but also help with conscious beliefs. If that’s true, then why is cognitive psychotherapy better?
E
This is a weakener! It makes it sound like cognitive psychotherapy only “helps” the one part that psychotherapy doesn’t need to help.
Passage
Therapist: Cognitive psychotherapy focuses on changing a patient's conscious beliefs. Thus, cognitive psychotherapy is likely to be more effective at helping patients overcome psychological problems than are forms of psychotherapy that focus on changing unconscious beliefs and desires, since only conscious beliefs are under the patient's direct conscious control.
Question 13
Which one of the following, if true, would most strengthen the therapist's argument?
Psychological problems are frequently caused by unconscious beliefs that could be changed with the aid of psychotherapy.
It is difficult for any form of psychotherapy to be effective without focusing on mental states that are under the patient's direct conscious control.
Cognitive psychotherapy is the only form of psychotherapy that focuses primarily on changing the patient's conscious beliefs.
No form of psychotherapy that focuses on changing the patient's unconscious beliefs and desires can be effective unless it also helps change beliefs that are under the patient's direct conscious control.
All of a patient's conscious beliefs are under the patient's conscious control, but other psychological states cannot be controlled effectively without the aid of psychotherapy.