Therapist: Support Cognitive psychotherapy focuses on changing a patient's conscious beliefs. Thus, 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, since Support only conscious beliefs are under the patient's direct conscious control.
The therapist argues that cognitive psychotherapy is likely more effective at helping patients overcome psychological problems than forms of psychotherapy that focus on changing unconscious beliefs and desires. Why? Two premises work together:
Premise 1: Cognitive psychotherapy focuses on changing a patient's conscious beliefs.
Premise 2: Only conscious beliefs are under the patient's direct conscious control. (In other words, if something is under your direct conscious control, it must be a conscious belief.)
The reasoning seems to be: cognitive psychotherapy targets the things you can directly control (conscious beliefs), while other therapies target things you can't directly control (unconscious beliefs and desires). And targeting what you can control is supposedly better.
The premises establish a difference between the two types of therapy in terms of control. But they never connect control to effectiveness.
The conclusion introduces a new concept, effectiveness, that doesn't appear anywhere in the premises. Neither premise says anything about what makes a therapy effective or ineffective.
If you're particularly skilled at logical reasoning, you might recognize that the therapist is assuming something like: focusing on mental states that are under the patient's direct conscious control is what makes a therapy effective.
But at a minimum, we should recognize that to strengthen this argument, we probably need an answer that helps establish what makes one type of psychotherapy more effective than another. The answer should connect something in the premises to effectiveness.
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.
This would actually hurt the argument rather than help it. If psychological problems are frequently caused by unconscious beliefs that could be changed with psychotherapy, that gives us a reason to think therapies focused on the unconscious might be effective. That's the opposite of what we want.
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.
This helps connect control to effectiveness. (B) tells us that if a form of psychotherapy doesn't focus on mental states under the patient's direct conscious control, it's difficult for that therapy to be effective. Since therapies that focus on unconscious beliefs do not focus on things under direct conscious control, (B) tells us it's difficult for those therapies to be effective.
Although (B) doesn't guarantee that cognitive psychotherapy is effective, it establishes that the other therapies face a serious obstacle to effectiveness that cognitive psychotherapy doesn't face. That strengthens the claim that cognitive psychotherapy is likely more effective.
Cognitive psychotherapy is the only form of psychotherapy that focuses primarily on changing the patient's conscious beliefs.
This tells us cognitive psychotherapy is the only therapy that primarily focuses on changing conscious beliefs. But singling out cognitive psychotherapy as unique in this way doesn't establish that focusing on conscious beliefs has any connection to being more effective. Even without (C), we already know from the stimulus that cognitive psychotherapy focuses on conscious beliefs. Learning that no other therapy shares this focus doesn't help us conclude that this focus makes cognitive psychotherapy more effective than therapies targeting the unconscious.
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.
(D) is the trickiest wrong answer and is very similar to (B). The word "helps" in (D) is the problem.
(D) tells us that if a psychotherapy form doesn't help change beliefs under conscious control, then it's not effective. But what if a psychotherapy form does help change beliefs under conscious control? Then it's not necessarily ineffective. The rule in (D) wouldn't tell us anything if we learn that the form helps with conscious beliefs.
Here's why that matters. Just because a therapy focuses on the unconscious doesn't mean it can't also help change conscious beliefs on the side. "Focuses on" tells us where the primary attention goes, not that conscious beliefs are completely ignored. So we can't rule out the possibility that unconscious-focused therapies also help change conscious beliefs.
Compare this with (B). (B) says it's difficult to be effective without focusing on states under direct conscious control. Since we know these other therapies don't focus on conscious states, (B) applies to them directly. With (D), we don't know whether it applies, because therapies that focus on the unconscious might still help with the conscious.
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.
The first half tells us all conscious beliefs are under conscious control. But that doesn't help establish that focusing on things under conscious control makes a therapy more effective. The second half tells us that other psychological states (beyond beliefs) can't be controlled effectively without psychotherapy. But this doesn't distinguish between types of psychotherapy. It just says psychotherapy in general is needed for controlling these other states. Since (E) doesn't give us any reason to think one kind of psychotherapy is more effective than another, it doesn't strengthen the argument.
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