PrepTest 117, Section 2, Question 24
Psychologist: Some psychologists mistakenly argue that because dreams(60 more words not shown)
The claim that dream content(12 more words not shown)
- AIt is used(11 more words not shown)
- BIt is used(26 more words not shown)
- CIt is used(19 more words not shown)
- DIt is used(14 more words not shown)
- EIt is used(15 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Why should explaining the electrical activity settle everything about a dream?
The psychologists being criticized start with an account of what happens in the brain. Then they say dreams must be understood purely in those physiological terms and reveal nothing about the dreamer's character. I can see why the author pushes back: identifying a physical process and completely explaining the experience are different claims.
The author's reason is that the content of dreams varies enormously. That observation is offered as something the electrical-discharge account hasn't fully explained. We don't have to settle the science of dreaming or prove Freud right to follow the argument. The author's point is narrower: electrical discharges cannot completely explain dreaming.
What we’re looking for
Now we're asked what role the claim about varied dream content plays. Work backward from that conclusion. The variation is a reason for thinking the purely physiological account is incomplete. In other words, it supports the author's objection to the psychologists, rather than supporting their attack on Freud.
Working the answers
- A
This points in the wrong direction. The anti-Freudian psychologists conclude that dreams reveal nothing about the dreamer's character. The author uses varied dream content to challenge the account behind that conclusion, not to support it. Keep the author and the people being criticized separate.
- B
This sounds sympathetic to Freud, but check what it calls the explicitly stated conclusion. The author doesn't state that a fully satisfactory account must allow for dreams revealing significant information about the dreamer. The stated conclusion is that electrical discharges cannot completely explain dreaming.
Showing that one account is incomplete doesn't, by itself, establish what a complete account must say. B substitutes a stronger, different conclusion for the one the premise actually supports.
- C
The argument doesn't use the variation to attack Freud's theory. It challenges the psychologists who say the physiological account is all we need. C turns an objection to that account into an objection to both sides, and the passage doesn't make that additional move.
- D
An explanation can fail without the right explanation being difficult to find. Imagine an easy explanation that these psychologists simply overlooked. The author's claim that their account is incomplete would still stand. D changes a criticism of a particular explanation into a claim about how difficult the entire problem is.
- ECorrect
Follow the links. Some psychologists claim that dreams must be understood purely through their physiological function. They use that claim to argue against Freud's view that dreams can reveal the dreamer's character. The author brings up the great variation in dream content to undermine the psychologists' claim of a complete physiological account.
So the observation works against a claim used against Freud. That layered wording can sound complicated, but it describes the same simple role we predicted: a reason for the author's objection.
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