Logical Reasoning

PT112 · S3 · Q13 While it was once believed

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While it was once believed that the sort of psychotherapy appropriate for the treatment of neuroses caused by environmental factors is also appropriate for schizophrenia and other psychoses, it is now known that these latter, more serious forms of mental disturbance are best treated by biochemical—that is, medicinal—means.

Conclusion (this is conclusive evidence)

Psychoses, unlike neuroses, have nothing to do with environmental factors but rather are caused by some purely organic condition (internal stuff).

Evidence

It was once believed that the appropriate psychotherapy for neuroses caused by environmental factors would also work for psychoses.

But now we know that these psychoses are best treated by biochemical (medicinal) means.

Evaluate

This is a pretty dense stimulus to parse, but ultimately this argument is going to come down to an assumption that .

The evidence and the conclusion are both doing a comparison/contrast between neuroses and psychoses.

We had neuroses that were caused by environmental factors (i.e. your mom used to always lick her finger and fix your bangs, and now you're super neurotic about fixing your hair). The appropriate treatment was psychotherapy (i.e. sitting with a therapist and talking through your problems, trying to get your mind / psyche into better shape).

We used to believe that this psychotherapy was also the right treatment for psychoses (such as multiple personality disorder). But now we know that a better treatment is pharmaceutical drugs (i.e. stuff you ingest that changes your body chemistry ... and maybe gets your brain into better shape).

Because we can better treat psychoses with something (drugs) that changes your biochemistry than with something (psychotherapy) that changes your mind / thoughts, the author is concluding that psychoses must be more about the body and less about the mind. Thus, they are more caused by body stuff than by environmental factors.

Goal

Let's look for an answer that speaks to this weird move from "better treatment" to "the root cause".

The author thinks that a condition that is better treated by changing brain chemistry than by changing mental activity must therefore be caused by something wrong with brain chemistry, rather than something wrong with environmental factors that messed up someone's thoughts.

Since this question stem is putting "ignores the possibility" in front of every answer choice, we're really just going to ask ourselves whether each answer choice Weakens.

Thus, we could call this a Flaw question, or we could call it a Weaken (that's disguised as Flaw).

13.

The argument is vulnerable to criticism because it ignores the possibility that

  1. Correct

    the organic conditions that result

    Why this is right

    Does this weaken? Heck, yeah! It just contradicts the conclusion. Jeez, why did we spend so much time trying to understand that dreadful stimulus? The conclusion is that "psychoses have nothing to do with environmental factors". This says, "the conditions that result in psychoses can be caused or exacerbated by environmental factors". So clearly psychoses do have something to do with environmental factors. We don't expect Weaken answers to basically refute the conclusion, but if they do, you can't get more powerful than that.

    Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    84% picked this

  2. the symptoms of mental disturbance

    Strengthens, if anything

    The author thinks that psychoses are caused by purely organic factors, and she said that they are best treated by biochemical - that is, medicinal - means. So she would totally agree with this answer.

    4% picked this

  3. organic illnesses that are nonpsychological

    Out of Scope: nonpsychological

    We're talking about mental disturbances (neuroses and psychoses), both of which are psychological afflictions. This answer is talking about illnesses that don't have to do with the mind. Those illnesses have nothing to do with this argument. We're only talking about whether psychoses (a psychological mental illness) is influenced by the environment or caused purely by chemical/physical stuff. Anything we say about non-psychological illnesses will have dubious relevance, if any, in this discussion.

    4% picked this

  4. the nature of any medical

    Strengthens

    This matches the author's thinking (albeit, this is more extreme). But the author is loosely thinking that, "Since psychoses are best treated by something that has a chemical/physical nature, we can infer that the nature of psychosis itself is chemical / physical." We're supposed to be weakening the argument, not describing how the author thinks. If the question stem had said, "The argument is vulnerable to criticism because it takes for granted that", then this answer would be worth considering.

    4% picked this

  5. organic factors having little to

    No Impact

    The claim the conclusion makes about neuroses is that "neuroses do have something to do with environmental factors". This doesn't say anything to undermine that idea. We probably should be suspicious of this answer since it's dealing with neuroses, which was an aside within the conclusion, rather than with psychoses, which was the actual subject of the conclusion.

    4% picked this

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