PrepTest 158, Section 3, Question 13

What we’re looking for

Working the answers

• A

  This introduces a different requirement: patients must focus on other people's troubles before their own relationships can change. The argument never requires that shift of attention to other people's problems. Its proposed focus is positive change in the patient's relationships, and its goal is helping the patient heal. A adds a new step to a different claim.

• B

  Perhaps changing relationships sometimes fails to heal a patient. But the argument doesn't need there to be such failures. It could maintain that a focus on relationships is required whether that approach works for every patient or for only some. B concerns the possibility of failure after using the proposed approach, not whether the approach is necessary.

• C

  This promises at least some relief to patients who change their relationships. The psychotherapist claims a relationship focus is required for healing, not that a relationship change guarantees relief. Something can be a needed part of treatment without being enough by itself. C gives us a promise the argument doesn't need.

• D
  Correct

  If a psychotherapist could help a patient heal solely by addressing internal causes, the proposed focus on relationships wouldn't be required in that case. That is exactly our objection. The argument therefore needs to rule out success through internal treatment alone.

  Notice what D does not say: it doesn't promise that addressing relationships will produce healing. It only rules out a route that would bypass the claimed requirement. That makes it fit the argument's “must” claim.

• E

  This says that focusing on purely internal troubles provides the relief patients seek. That would give us a route to relief without the required relationship focus, undermining the argument. An assumption the argument requires should help it stand, not supply the alternative treatment route we used to challenge it.