Psychologist: Some psychologists mistakenly argue that because dreams

Hi, Please could you explain why option E is the best?
I chose the option D since it stated that there was a difficulty to come up with the complete explanation of dreaming.
I can see that the psychologist disagrees with the opinion of other psychologists about Freud's theory, but in the end of the passage he agrees that electrical discharges have an impact on dreams, even though they cannot explain it completely.
Because of the aforementioned reason, I went with option D

P.S. The link for some reason is not opening at my PC, thus, I cannot reach the official forum explanation.

Hello nightblade354 ,
For this question I chose D, but looking at the explaination in the forum, I see where I went wrong.

"Illustrates" means that this premise has been used to SUPPORT the difficulty that Scientists' might be facing. So if option D were true, then author would have spoken in line with Scientists right?

In the argument, the author is negative to the Scientists, thus "illustrates" can't be true.

Is this a proper way to understand why Option D is incorrect?

Regards,
Rishav

manass,

If we refer to the passage as a whole, I believe the option C would be an appropriate choice.
However, if you pay attention, the question asks about the purpose of using the phrase "But since dream content varies enormously" by the author. And by using this phrase, his main purpose was to contradict to the statement preceding this phrase that the dream can be explained purely by electrical discharges.

Hope it helps.

rish2708 and RusskiyLev, think about the passage for a moment. We have a group of psychologists vs. Freud. Our end goal is not to prove the complete phenomenon of dreaming, but to point out a flaw in someone's reasoning. This is why (D) is wrong. We have no idea who is right about dreaming. Maybe someone is correct in the passage, or maybe there is a completely different explanation. Either way, it is not the purpose of that sentence.

I'm late to the party here, and I think nightblade354 probably covered this for most people. But I'll toss in my two cents, just in case it helps somebody.

Notice that the passage doesn't mention anything about the difficulty of providing a complete explanation of the phenomenon of dreaming. The psychologist simply concludes that electrical discharges alone "cannot completely explain the phenomenon of dreaming". (D) does NOT say, "... difficulty of providing a complete explanation of the phenomenon of dreaming SOLELY based on electrical discharges," so it's not quite accurate.

To answer the question, we need to establish the role played by the claim that "dream content varies widely" in the author's argument. Why exactly did the author include this claim? How does it fit in with the other pieces of his/her argument?

The claim that dream content varies enormously is used to undermine the claim that dreams must be understood PURELY in terms of their physiological function. That claim was used by some psychologists to argue against Freud. That makes (E) our answer.

I hope that helps!

I just want to share my train of thought to arrive at E.

I broke down the stem as follows.

Line 1: A supposed Freudian psychologist, the speaker, cites other psychologists coming from a supposedly different school of thought, referring to them as “mistakenly arguing”. Also, the following underlined words jumped out to me. These words constitute the characterisation of the supposedly non-Freudian psychologists from the speaker’s perspective.

Some psychologists mistakenly argue that because dreams result from electrical discharges in the brain, they must be understood purely in terms of their physiological function.

Line 2: The speaker explains the non-Freudian’s position.

Line 3: Then, here comes “but”, a marker of a shift in the argument, followed by the claim in question: ‘dream content varies enormously’.

For some reason, I dismissed D in the first round of filtering. D seems to me to be a general statement about the inherent difficulty of interpreting dreams, but Line 3, containing the claim in question, is given clearly in response to the non-Freudian psychologists’ claim. So, D, I felt, is not quite right here.
(D) It is used to illustrate the difficulty of providing a complete explanation of the phenomenon of dreaming

I was actually torn between B and E, thinking that “well, this is a hard question, and even though E seems to me to be right on the button, let’s have another round of filtering.

(B) It is used to support the explicitly stated conclusion that a fully satisfactory account of dreams must allow for the possibility of their revealing significant information about the dreamer
Then, I eventually crossed B, having spotted a part that makes the choice B definitely not right: “explicitly stated conclusion”.

(E) it is used to undermine a claim that some psychologists use to argue against a view of Freud’s
Then, I was left with E.

Conclusion of some psychologists:
Dreams must be understood purely in terms of their physiological function; they reveal nothing about the character of the dreamer, despite the opinion of Freud.
Conclusion of the passage:
These psychologists are mistaken.

Passage:
since dream content varies enormously
Here, the usage of since implies that the green portion is a PREMISE.
This premise supports the conclusion of the passage (that the psychologists are mistaken).
Only E expresses this purpose:
The green portion is used to undermine a claim that some psychologists use to argue against a view of Freud’s.

From PS:

In this stimulus, the psychologist concludes that since dream content varies widely, dreams cannot be
entirely explained as simply physiological phenomena. The psychologist makes this argument to counter
the claim that dreams, as purely physical processes, reveal nothing about character or psychology.
The question asks us to identify the role of the claim that dream content varies enormously. This claim
is a premise offered by the psychologist to support the conclusion. It is also worth noting that this claim
attacks the other psychologists’ conclusions.

Answer choice (A): The claim is not used to support any anti-Freudian conclusion. In fact, the author
appears to be defending Freud, disputing those with anti-Freudian views.

Answer choice (B): This choice might be attractive, but it is wrong, because “explicit” means
“definitively stated.” The speaker implies that a fully satisfactory, or complete, explanation of dreams
might allow for psychological considerations; the psychologist never explicitly states this conclusion,
however, so this answer choice is incorrect.

Answer choice (C): The psychologist does not make the claim that neither line of reasoning offers a
complete explanation, only that dreams cannot be completely understood in terms of physiological
function.

Answer choice (D): The stimulus is not meant to illustrate the general difficulties of completely
explaining dreaming, but rather to argue that dreams cannot be completely understood in terms of
physiological function.

Answer choice (E): This is the correct answer choice. The claim is a premise which supports the
psychologist’s conclusion, and serves to undermine an opposing claim.

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