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1000 CR Freud's Theories

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1000 CR Freud's Theories

by mundasingh123 » Mon Dec 27, 2010 4:24 am
Freud's theories of the workings of the mind, while brilliant for their day, were formulated before most of this century's great advances in neurophysiology and biochemistry. Today, we have a far deeper understanding of the biological components of thought, emotion, and behavior than was dreamed of eighty years ago. It would be foolish to continue parroting Freud's psychological theories as if these advances had never occurred.
It can be inferred from the passage above that the author would be most likely to favor
(A) the abandonment of most of Freud's theories
(B) a greater reliance on biological rather than psychological explanations of behavior
(C) a critical reexamination of Freud's place in the history of psychology
(D) a reexamination of Freud's theories in the light of contemporary biology
(E) increased financial support for studies in neurophysiology and biochemistry
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by mundasingh123 » Mon Dec 27, 2010 4:26 am
mundasingh123 wrote:Freud's theories of the workings of the mind, while brilliant for their day, were formulated before most of this century's great advances in neurophysiology and biochemistry. Today, we have a far deeper understanding of the biological components of thought, emotion, and behavior than was dreamed of eighty years ago. It would be foolish to continue parroting Freud's psychological theories as if these advances had never occurred.
It can be inferred from the passage above that the author would be most likely to favor
(A) the abandonment of most of Freud's theories
(B) a greater reliance on biological rather than psychological explanations of behavior
(C) a critical reexamination of Freud's place in the history of psychology
(D) a reexamination of Freud's theories in the light of contemporary biology
(E) increased financial support for studies in neurophysiology and biochemistry
OA is D

This is an inferrence question and the stimulus nowhere mentions that a reexamination is required then why D?
Can sucha question be representative of the actual GMAT
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by David@VeritasPrep » Mon Dec 27, 2010 7:18 am
Received a PM...

mundasingh123 - This is not based on any official GMAT question that I know and is in fact a little far astray from the inference type of question on the actual test. The problem is that our techniques for attacking the inference question - techniques that work so well on GMAT questions - do not necessarily work on this question.

This question is actually more appropriate as a reading comprehension question!! The author of the passage would most likely agree with is a question stem that works best for a reading passage...

I think this is the essence of your question. The answer is "no this is not like the real GMAT."

With that said, we can still profit from questions that are not exactly like the GMAT. We could use some process of elimination here:

A) It is too extreme to say that we should abandon Freud (although he does say to not just repeat Freud's theories).

B) I am not sure the author favors even more reliance on biological theories - he does acknowledge that such a development has occurred.

C) The reexamination is not of Freud's place in history.

D) This is the official answer. I think it could be edited a bit (this is true of most of the questions I write too!) Can we really say that he is looking for a "reexamination of Freud's theories"? Maybe say that the theories need to be understood along with the advances and not merely repeated. So this is not a perfect answer and would not likely be the answer to an official question.

E) This we can eliminate. We know nothing of finances from this...


So all in all not a perfect question, and not one that would appear on the GMAT. Choices C and E are easiest to eliminate. D may be a little better than A or B.

Hope that helps!
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by mundasingh123 » Mon Dec 27, 2010 8:16 am
David@VeritasPrep wrote:Received a PM...

mundasingh123 - This is not based on any official GMAT question that I know and is in fact a little far astray from the inference type of question on the actual test. The problem is that our techniques for attacking the inference question - techniques that work so well on GMAT questions - do not necessarily work on this question.

D) This is the official answer. I think it could be edited a bit (this is true of most of the questions I write too!) Can we really say that he is looking for a "reexamination of Freud's theories"? Maybe say that the theories need to be understood along with the advances and not merely repeated. So this is not a perfect answer and would not likely be the answer to an official question.

So all in all not a perfect question, and not one that would appear on the GMAT. Choices C and E are easiest to eliminate. D may be a little better than A or B.

Hope that helps!
Thanks David for the reply,I also feel that The author just says that the Theories had been devised by Freu when none of the Biomedical advances had taken place.He nowhere points outs a drawback of the theories .
By drawback,what i mean is something like "Freudian Theories never considered Behavior from the Biological perspective".He doesnt point out a loophole or a missing link in the Freudian Theories>He talks as if the Freudian Theories are now obsolete
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