Practice Verbal Reasoning 10.docx

Practice Verbal Reasoning 10 Questions __________________________________________________________________________ Number of Items: 40 Time Allowed: 60 minutes DIRECTIONS: There are seven passages in the Verbal Reasoning test. Each passage is followed by several questions. After reading a passage, select the one best answer to each question. If you are not certain of an answer, eliminate the alternatives that you know to be incorrect then select an answer from the remaining alternatives. Indicate your selection by clicking on the answer bubble next to it. Passage I The imposition of rent control to regulate rapidly rising rents has met with a great deal of controversy. Proponents argue that rent is an inflexible cost. As such, if rents increase substantially, especially over the short term, the tenant must either pay the increase or move. If housing shortages exist, the tenant has no alternative but to pay the higher rent. Families are forced to restructure their budgetary priorities, thereby postponing the purchase of anything but essential consumer goods and services. Family diets and appropriate medical care may be adversely affected. Because of the strong social approval associated with adequate housing, the government has from time to time attempted to regulate its cost through rent control. The economy is presently characterized by deep-seated and chronic problems. One consequence of this economic hardship is that fewer and fewer families are able to afford home ownership. Accordingly, renting is no longer considered a short-term, temporary housing situation. Under these circumstances, proponents of rent regulation contend that rent ceilings are required as a means of long-term financial relief in the face of this economic burden. This rationale must, of course, be reconciled with the fact that rent control has traditionally been imposed as a short-term measure in response to an emergency housing shortage. Although rent-control controversy has primarily focused on opposition between tenants and landlords, other conflicts have arisen that deserve consideration. If it can be demonstrated that rent control tends to reduce apartment construction, it becomes a conflict between present renters and future renters. To the extent that rent control encourages the conversion of apartments to condominiums, it also represents a conflict between renters and potential home buyers. The purpose of almost all rent -control ordinances is to protect tenants from inordinate rent increases in a time of a limited rental housing stock. If the rent-control community has little available land for further development, a rent-control ordinance with moderate features can be justified on a long- term basis. In this situation, rent control can be further justified because the loss of consumer’s surplus is minimized. On the other hand, if the community wishes to stem the tide of rising rents while at the same time provide investors with incentives to construct much needed apartment units, the justification for rent control on even a long-term basis cannot be easily made. The elastic supply curve for rental housing implies that rent control would produce a tremendous societal loss in terms of consumer’s surplus. Moreover, even a slightly restrictive ordinance may well serve to negate the purpose of maintaining investment incentives. Short-term rent control cannot be recommended under any circumstances simply because it has the effect of any temporary price freeze. Specifically, it creates a pent-up desire on the part of landlords to raise rents exorbitantly after decontrol takes place. Also, rent control ordinances with highly restrictive features cannot be justified. There is no question that rent control is an interference in the free market. Such interference, however, has been justified in the societal interest for a wide spectrum of publicly provided goods and services. Local decision makers and legislative bodies in a growing number of communities have begun to view rent control as a necessary component of housing and land-use policy. Long-term, moderate rent control can be justified in communities where construction is not taking place as a result of physical and/or policy constraints. The decision by a locality to impose rent control should be based upon a critical examination of many complex and interactive variables. It is incumbent on the judiciary to require such an examination and to realize that rent control in one community may be appropriate while being inappropriate in another. The courts should be flexible in this regard and not use narrow grounds upon which to rule on the validity of a quite significant public policy issue. As a single measure of validity, the housing emergency and associated vacancy rate are limiting and archaic. In an era of growth controls, conservation of scarce resources, and high inflation, rent control can be an appropriate and necessary policy choice. Which of the following best describes the position of the author of this passage on the imposing of rent control? Rent control unjustly violates the property rights of property owners. Short-term rent control should be imposed after careful study of the economic situation. Long-term rent control can frequently be justified. Rent is an inflexible cost. According to the passage, the rent-control issue may logically be regarded as a conflict between all of the following EXCEPT new apartment construction and conversion to condominiums. present renters and future renters. renters and potential home buyers. long-term solutions and short-term tax credits. The purpose of most rent-control ordinances is to encourage housing construction. prevent unfair rent increases. encourage home buying rather than renting. prevent landlord profits. Supporters of the case for rent control are likely to use all of the following arguments EXCEPT Rent control encourages the rate of conversion of rental property to condominiums. Many landlords are greedy for high profits. The burden of large rent increases falls most heavily on those with low incomes. Without controls, a tenant who cannot pay increased rent must pay moving costs. Under which of the following situations would the author of the passage be most likely to support rent control? A community eager to encourage new housing construction A community eager to encourage its population growth A community with no additional land for new rental housing A community with many vacancies in rental housing Opponents of rent control are likely to use all of the following arguments EXCEPT Rent control is an interference in the market. Decontrol is usually followed by much higher rents. Rent control depresses the construction of new rental housing. In cities with little available building land, rent control minimizes the loss of consumer’s surplus. Passage II Glass is considered to be a state of matter, rather than a particular substance. It has been defined by G. W. Morey as “an- inorganic substance in a condition which is continuous with, and analogous to, the liquid state of that substance, but which, as a result of a reversible change in viscosity during cooling, has attained so high a degree of viscosity as to be for all practical purposes rigid.” Man-made siliceous glass is a mixture of ingredients rather than a chemical compound. Therefore it has no formula, and the proportions of its ingredients may vary. Nevertheless, there are some differences in the chief reasons for presence of ingredients, and this principle allows the ingredients of glass to be divided into the following three main classes. First there are the basic, or constitutional, ingredients. These are silica (SiO2). In a conventional soda-lime glass, silica may form about 60% of the glass by weight. This is obtained from siliceous rock or sand. an ingredient which lowers the temperature of fusion of the silica. One or both of the alkalis sodium oxide or potassium oxide, obtained from soda or potash respectively, serve this purpose. Lead oxide can also serve this purpose. other ingredients. Some provide chemical stability or act as a flux, such as calcium oxide (lime) or aluminum oxide. Some, often iron, may be considered impurities. The most commonly -encountered glass composition is the soda-lime glass, which conventionally contains 60% silica, 15% sodium oxide, and 5% calcium oxide. Another commonly-encountered composition is the potassium glass, characterized by 15% potassium oxide rather than sodium oxide. Although one does not often see the term “potassium-lime” glass, it is usual for potassium glasses to contain 5-20% calcium oxide. Soda-lime glasses are typical of the ancient Near East, the ancient Occident, the medieval Near East, and the modern world. Only medieval Europe is a well-known exception: here the potassium glass is typical. The second main class of ingredients is made up of the glassmakers’ additives. These are added for an artistic or technical purpose, such as to color, to decolorize, to opacify, or to clarify. Up until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the conventional means of coloring glasses were few. Opaque red and blue-green could both be created with copper. Green could be created with copper or iron or both. Manganese yielded purple, cobalt gave royal blue, and black usually consisted of either exceedingly dark green, purple, or royal blue. Opaque yellow and orange were created from undissolved compounds of antimony and lead or of tin and lead, with the presence of zinc pushing the color towards orange. The last main class is formed by the trace elements, or impurities. They are the elements present in low concentration over which presumably, the glassmakers exerted no control. Some scrap glass, or collet, was and is almost always included in glass batches in order to aid vitrification. The chemical ingredients of a glass sample need have no recognizable relation to the geographical region in which the glass factory lies. This is mainly because ideal ingredients are not universally distributed, and therefore the glass is often made by mixing ingredients from different geographical regions. The written history of glass contains numerous notices of an international commerce in silica, alkalis, cullet or other scavenged material, colorants, and even possible glass ingots and similar material. Indeed in some respects glassmakers participated in something like an international cult. They visited and copied one another; there are frequent accounts of rather large-scale migrations of glassmakers and their families; and to a large extent the occupation itself spread along family lines. It has been remarked that it is easier to judge the date of an ancient artifact than its place of manufacture. Another reason for the difficulty in tracing glass to a region of manufacture may be that glassmakers of the past did not see their ingredients with a modern chemical perspective. They were aiming at a result, not a chemical composition intelligible to posterity. It should not be thought that glassmakers used pure elements to make the glass. The fact that alkalis could be divided into two types, soda and potash, was not clearly understood until the eighteenth century. It is said that many glassmakers were not aware that lime is desirable for stability, but their ingredients were so impure that they put in sufficient lime unawares. One must remember that modern chemistry itself did not exist before the eighteenth century. Past glassmaking was a craft carried out according to a good deal of unwritten lore. Alchemists and glassmakers had much in common, and even today not every glassmaker’s trick is understood according to modern chemical precepts. The chemical formula for glass is 60% silica, 15% sodium oxide, and 5% calcium oxide. dependent upon whether sodium oxide or potassium oxide is used. an inheritance from the ancient world. none of the above. The alkalis commonly used in glass are sodium oxide and potassium oxide. soda obtained from potash. sodium oxide, potassium oxide, and lead oxide. calcium oxide and aluminum oxide. The original glass windows of the medieval European cathedrals were probably all broken after placement on account of chemical instability. exceptional for their transparency due to the absence of undissolved compounds. made of potassium glass. made from scavenged ancient material. According to the article, the three main classes-of glass ingredients are silica, alkali, and other ingredients which provide stability or act as a flux. major ingredients, minor ingredients, and trace elements. basic ingredients, glassmakers’ additives, and trace elements. basic ingredients, impurities, and cullet. The chemical ingredients of a glass can reveal its probable place of manufacture. provide knowledge of the trace elements in common use. show that glassmakers and alchemists belonged to similar cult-like organizations. come from places that are far apart. Glassmakers of the past came from a very few closely related families. contributed to the ultimate invention of modern chemistry. used an unwritten lore enabling them to obtain a purity of ingredients otherwise only available to alchemists. showed a practical craftsmanship that compensated for ignorance about their raw materials that today might be considered a defect. Passage III Of several known altar paintings by John A. Rein, only one has been researched. It is The Last Supper, painted in 1895 for a small country church near Roseau in northern Minnesota. The circular arrangement of the figures and the rugged expressiveness of their faces brings to mind the same subject as depicted in the folk baroque altars of central Norway. A comparison with a more readily available model, however, tends to weaken the theory of Norwegian inspiration. In the same edition of the Norwegian-American Bible used by the artist Lars Christenson there is an illustration of da Vinci’s Last Supper, in which the figures have been rearranged to fit the page by cutting off those on both ends and placing them together below the center section. The result bears several striking similarities to Rein’s arrangement of figures. For example, the five figures in front of the table face right and look toward one figure at the end, who faces left. The Bible also includes portraits of the apostles drawn from da Vinci’s fresco. Most of them reappear in easily recognizable form as the heads in Rein’s work. Rein’s The Last Supper appears to be very much his own creation, freely put together from elements in the limited art work available to him. When these sources were not sufficient for his needs, he turned to what he saw around him. The chair in the foreground is of the peasant empire type which was popular in the early Norwegian settlements. The pitcher and bowl, motifs possibly introduced as the result of confusion between the themes of the Washing of the Feet and the Last Supper, appear to have come directly from a nineteenth-century washstand. While the specific sources for Rein’s altar painting appear to have been American, the strong expressive color and undulating line are typical of Norwegian art. The strong impact of the work results, in part, from the organic character of the shadow from which the figures rise and from the converging lines of the floor and ceiling which center on the figure of Christ, drawing the viewer into this holy company. The case of John Rein poses the problem of how the concept of ethnicity relates to that of folk art. He learned the woodworker’s trade in Norway, and he may also have acquired there an affinity for certain kinds of line and color; as a painter, however, he was largely self-taught. His work is distinguished as much by those characteristics which we have come to call primitive as by those which might be considered part of Norwegian tradition. He is, therefore, close to that large body of self-taught American folk artists who, out of a drive to express themselves in form, have experimented their way to a medium through which their creative needs are fulfilled. In this art with its “private vision” and “personal universe,” to quote Herbert Hemphill, Jr., there can be no ethnicity. The word ethnicity, itself, implies an acquired set of patterns and beliefs which characterize a group. In order to bring ethnicity into a discussion of folk art, one is forced to recognize tradition as a major element in it. There are purely self-taught artists among the Norwegian-Americans, some of whom are of considerable interest, but there is nothing intrinsically Norwegian-American in their work. Rein falls close to these. The author of the passage is interested primarily in which of the following aspects of the work of John Rein? Its relationship to the work of other Norwegian-American artists Its use of religious themes and symbols The light it sheds on the nature of primitive painting The probable sources of its style and content According to the passage, an analysis of Rein’s work sheds light on the influence of Norwegian art on the work of Norwegian-American folk artists. use of artwork in American religious architecture. lifestyle of Norwegian-Americans during the nineteenth century. relationship of ethnic identity to self-taught artistic style. The passage suggests that John Rein’s work is not “ethnic” in the sense that it contains many elements drawn from Rein’s immediate physical surroundings. derives many of its motifs from American rather than Norwegian sources. reflects primarily an individual vision rather than a traditional style. was created mainly out of a personal desire for self-expression rather than to serve communal needs. It can be inferred from the passage that the author considers Rein’s The Last Supper to be crude but effective. powerful and expressive. interesting but lacking in originality. unskillful but historically significant. It can be inferred from the passage that which of the following would be most likely to reflect a specifically Norwegian artistic style? Paintings by Rein other than The Last Supper The artwork contained in the Norwegian-American Bible The pieces produced by Rein in his work as a woodworker The works of Lars Christenson Passage IV The picture of Pythagorean mathematics that has been presented is based largely on reports of commentators who lived many centuries later and who were, almost without exception, interested in philosophical aspects of thought. Although it appears plausible to assume, with the commentators, that it was the Pythagoreans who were largely responsible for the abstract and intellectual view that fashioned mathematics into a liberal discipline, the level of sophistication during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. may not have been as high as that attributed to them by tradition. It must have been all too tempting to later devotees of a philosophical school, such as the Pythagorean, to exaggerate the accomplishments of the founder and of the early members of the sect. It is highly probable that elements of primitivity were present during the early stages of Pythagoreanism, but went unreported. It is obvious also that the type of attitude toward mathematics represented by the Pythagoreans almost certainly was atypical of Greek thought as a whole. The Hellenes were celebrated as shrewd traders and businessmen, and there must have been a lower level of arithmetic or computation that satisfied the needs of the vast majority of Greek citizens. Number activities of this type would have been beneath the notice of philosophers and recorded accounts of practical arithmetic were unlikely to find their way into libraries of scholars. If, then, there are not even fragments surviving of the more sophisticated Pythagorean works, it is clear that it would be unreasonable to expect manuals of trade mathematics to survive the ravages of time. Hence it is not possible to tell at this distance how the ordinary processes of arithmetic were carried out in Greece 2,500 years ago. About the best one can do is to describe the systems of numeration that appear to have been in use. In general there seem to have been two chief systems of numeration in Greece: one, probably the earlier, is known as the Attic (or Herodianic) notation; the other is called the Ionian (or alphabetic) system. Both systems are, for integers, based on the ten-scale, but the former is the more primitive, being based on a simple iterative scheme found in the earlier Egyptian hieroglyphic numeration and in the later Roman numerals. In the Attic system, the numbers from one to four were represented by repeated vertical strokes. For the number five a new symbol, the first letter II (or ?) of the word for five, pente, was adopted. (Only capital letters were used at the time, both in literary works and in mathematics; lower-case letters being an invention of the later ancient or early Medieval period.) For numbers from six through nine, the Attic system combined the symbol ? with unit strokes, so that eight, for example, was written as ????. For positive integral powers of the base (ten), the initial letters of the corresponding number words were adopted, for deka (ten), H for hekaton (hundred), x for khilioi (thousand), and M for myrioi (ten thousand). Except for the forms of the symbols, the Attic system is much like the Roman; but it had one advantage. Where the Latin world adopted distinctive symbols for 50 and 500, the Greeks wrote these numbers by combining letters for 5, 10, and 100, using ? (or 5 times 10) for 50, and ?H (or 5 times 100) for 500. In the same way they wrote ?x for 5,000 and ?M for 50,000. In Attic script the number 45,678, for example, would appear as MMMM ?x ?H H ? ???? The Pythagoreans were mainly shrewd businessmen. average Hellenes. school teachers. philosophers. All of the following are false, EXCEPT Extensive records of the Pythagoreans remain. The Hellenes performed arithmetic operations using the same techniques as the Egyptians. The Ionian system of numeration predated the Attic system. None of the above The system of numeration which was not based on the ten scale is Attic. Ionian. Egyptian. None of the above The author would most likely agree with which of the following? The Pythagoreans concentrated on philosophy to the exclusion of practical mathematics. The Pythagoreans were less sophisticated than the Romans. The philosophical accomplishments attributed to the Pythagoreans have been exaggerated. The practical arithmetical accomplishments of the Pythagoreans have been exaggerated. 22. In the Attic system of numeration, ?x x ? would represent 6,045 5,145 6,040 645 The use of lower case letters can be attributed to the Hellenes. the Pythagoreans. the Latins. None of the above Passage V Experimental studies of sleep deprivation have been conducted for a number of years in an effort to determine the function of sleep. Theoretically, if sleep plays any biologically or psychologically essential role in the life of an organism, it should become apparent when the organism has been systematically deprived of sleep. However, the results of the experiments that have been conducted are not clear-cut. In some experiments, subjects deprived of sleep for periods of two hundred hours or more have been able to function on an almost normal level. The results of certain early studies, which seemed to suggest that psychotic-like symptoms, including hallucinations, loss of identity, and bizarre behavior, would routinely occur after a lengthy period of enforced sleeplessness, have not been confirmed. When these symptoms have occurred, it has generally been in subjects whose history revealed a predisposition to mental instability. In any case, the adverse effects of sleeplessness have been found to persist only rarely beyond a one- or two-day period of recovery sleep following the experimental vigil. Certain relatively mild reactions to prolonged sleep deprivation do occur with some regularity. Hand tremors, slurred speech, and insensitivity to visual, aural, and tactile stimulation are common in sleep-deprived subjects. There is usually some loss of efficiency in the performance of tasks, although the nature and degree of the loss depends on the of task imposed. Tasks for which the subject is able to set his or her own work pace are affected very slightly by sleep deprivation. On the other hand, when the task itself imposes a particular work pace, accuracy and efficiency are likely to drop dramatically. Lengthy tasks requiring thirty minutes or more of continuous work are more adversely affected, as are tasks requiring alertness to fleeting sensory stimuli. Some theorists contend that the difficulties encountered with work-paced tasks by sleep-deprived persons can be explained by the phenomenon of “microsleep,” momentary lapses into sleep by an otherwise wakeful individual. Microsleep episodes, while brief and often undetected by the subject, are thought to be likely to cause errors of omission in the performance of a task. At the completion of an experimental vigil, most subjects engage in a twelve- to fourteen-hour period of sleep, after which most effects of the deprivation are gone. For the first two or three nights after the vigil, the usual pattern of sleep stages recorded by the electroencephalogram (EEG) is generally disrupted. The first recovery night includes a much greater amount than usual of stage-4 sleep (the deepest form of sleep); with correspondingly shorter periods of stage-1, stage-2, stage-3, and REM sleep. The second recovery night generally includes slightly more stage-4 sleep than usual, but more striking is the sharp increase in REM sleep, the type of sleep associated with dreaming. The marked rebound in REM sleep after a period of enforced wakefulness generally supports the notion that some minimum amount of dreaming is necessary for full psychological health, although it leaves obscure the question as to exactly how or why. The passage suggests that experimental studies on sleep deprivation are potentially important primarily for the light they shed on the nature of psychotic symptoms. because of the insights they offer into problems of perception and problem-solving. as an aid to understanding the biological and psychological functions of sleep. because of the evidence they provide for the importance of dreaming as a psychological function. It can be inferred from the passage that the adverse effects of prolonged sleep deprivation have been found to be largely associated with the loss of stage-4 and REM sleep. confined mainly to those with a past history of mental disorders. so minor as to be negligible for nearly all practical purposes. somewhat less serious than was first thought. It can be inferred from the passage that all of the following would probably be seriously impeded in the performance of their tasks by prolonged sleep deprivation EXCEPT a hospital technician monitoring a patient’s vital functions on an oscilloscope. a soldier in a watchtower searching the horizon for signs of enemy aircraft. a factory worker assembling machine parts as they move past on an automated assembly line. a typist given a quantity of pages to type with no set time limit for completion of the task. With which of the following statements about the role of dreaming would the author be most likely to agree? No hard evidence exists to support the notion that dreaming is a necessary psychological function. Evidence from sleep-deprivation studies suggests that dreaming sleep is the single most essential type of sleep. Dreaming appears to be a psychologically necessary activity, but its exact role is still unknown. The enforced lack of dreaming experienced during sleep deprivation is apparently a psychologically damaging experience. In this passage, the author is primarily concerned with explaining the function of sleep in human life by analyzing the results of sleep deprivation. describing one aspect of the historical development of psychological knowledge about sleep. summarizing the present state of knowledge concerning the effects of sleep deprivation. discussing how sleep-deprivation studies have been conducted in recent years. Passage VI For the classical scholar, the Germania of Tacitus is a minor work, forming with the Agricola a kind of prelude to the great works of Tacitus, the Annals and the Histories . However, for the student of the Germanic people, Tacitus’s ethnographic treatise is a major source of information, mainly reliable, about the German tribes of the first century A.D. Studies of Tacitus have often attempted to clarify the author’s purpose in writing the Germania by defining it as an example of a particular literary genre. A few have seen the book primarily as a satire of Roman corruption, which uses the warlike but upright Germans as a stick with which to beat the to degeneracy and vice Tacitus observed in his contemporary Rome; others classify the book as an extended political pamphlet whose central purpose is to urge the emperor Trajan to some decisive Roman action, possibly invasion, to destroy the growing threat posed by the German tribes. Both these themes are present in the Germania, but they are not central to its purpose; if they were, Tacitus would certainly have made them more prominent and explicit. The book’s real purpose is the obvious one — to explain as fully as possible to a Roman audience what was known of the customs and character of a significant neighboring people. In this task, Tacitus was following the examples of several earlier ethnographers, including Livy, whose Histories included an ethnographic study of the German people, and Seneca, who wrote lost works about the peoples of India and Egypt that may well have resembled the Germania. Such works formed the type to which the Germania belongs, and though most of the examples are lost, it seems to have been a recognized genre of the period. However, as with most ethnographic studies to this day, the Germania reveals as much about the preoccupations of the society to which its author belonged as about the people who are the work’s ostensible subject. Thus, the fear of a German threat to the security of Rome is reflected in the largely military orientation of the study. The picture Tacitus paints is of a thoroughly warlike people, a nation of men who will “transact no business, public or private, without being armed,” a society that regards weapons as “the equivalent of the man’s toga with us” — i.e., the Romans — “the first distinction publicly conferred upon a youth, who now ceases to rank merely as a member of a household and becomes a citizen.” The Germans even applaud in assembly, not by clapping, but by clashing their spears. If Tacitus wishes to arouse the concern of his audience over a German military threat, these details would surely help his purpose. The author’s primary purpose in the passage is to explain the main purposes for which the Germania was written. suggest the usefulness of the Germania as a source of historical information about ancient Germany. compare the Germania to other ethnographic studies, including those written in our own time. analyze the ways in which the Germania reveals the ancient Roman attitude toward the Germans. According to the passage, the Germania is today of greatest importance to historians of the politics of imperial Rome. classical scholars. military historians. scholars in the field of Germanic culture. It can be inferred from the passage that those who consider the Germania as primarily satirical in purpose would probably regard the most significant feature of the book to be its emphasis on the military threat posed by the German tribes. the contrast it draws between the mores of the Germans and those of the Romans. the picture it paints of the German people as warlike and unsophisticated. its attack on the political intrigues that characterized imperial Rome. In defining the genre to which the Germania belongs, the author relies on the assumption that Tacitus regarded Livy and Seneca as the two earlier writers most worthy of emulation. ethnographic writing was commonly practiced at the time of Tacitus. the works of Livy and Seneca mentioned in the passage were basically similar to the Germania. the underlying purpose of a work of literature is most likely to be identical to the ostensible one. The author mentions the detail from the Germania concerning the Germans’ method of applauding primarily to illustrate the Germans’ attitude regarding the possession of weapons as a sign of manhood. the emphasis placed by Tacitus on the warlike character of the Germans. the threat against Rome posed by the German people. the martial nature of ancient German society. The author implies that the usefulness of the Germania as a source of information on the Germany of the time of Tacitus is limited by its satirical purpose. focus on material of special interest to the Romans of the time. reliance on sources of questionable reliability. imitation of models that are themselves no longer extant. Passage VII There have been many theories suggested to explain crime in terms of its relationship to the individual’s psychological makeup. Specifically, they hold that early childhood experiences leave an indelible imprint upon the child’s unconscious mind which, in turn, affects later behavior. The criminal is seen as an individual who is mentally ill, driven by unconscious motivation over which he has little or no control. Psychoanalytic theory, conceived Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), assumes that all human behavior is motivated and hence, goal-oriented in character. However, neither the motives nor the purposes of any given act can be understood by observing the overt act itself. Behavior can be understood only in terms of the subjective meanings and significances that the person himself attaches to his action. Freud believed that the structure of the personality consisted of three basic components: id, ego, and superego. The id represents the pleasure principle and is primarily aimed at avoiding pain and obtaining pleasure. The id is the basic source of motivation for human behavior. The superego is the internal representative of the traditional values and ideas of society as interpreted to the child by his parents: it functions as the conscience of the person. It is the moral arm of the personality, representing the ideal rather than the real, and it strives for perfection rather than for pleasure. The ego is said to obey the reality principle, and its chief function is mediating between the id and superego. Freud had little to say concerning crime, but some of those who adhere to his psychoanalytical principles have written at great length about crime and its cause. Psychoanalytic theories of crime tend to fall into three major categories or groups. The first group sees criminality as a form of neurosis. A neurotic individual may be characterized as suffering from guilt and anxiety brought about because of the overactivity of the superego with its relentless demand for perfection. Generally, it is believed that the criminal neurotic suffers from a compulsive need for punishment to alleviate his unconscious guilt, so he commits crime in order to gain this punishment. The second group describes the criminal as an antisocial person who has either a poorly developed superego or no superego at all. He is unable to cope properly with the restrictions of his society. He also lacks adequate internal controls, thus allowing the id to go unchecked. His sole basis for judging any act, then, is one of pleasure and pain. The third group sees criminality as a product of faulty family relationships. Criminal activity is carried out to gratify needs that would usually be met and fulfilled within the family, such needs as security, recognition, acceptance, status, and self-esteem. Instead, the criminal directs his activity into illegal channels of delinquency and crime as a means of securing substitute satisfactions for his faulty family situation. Abrahamsen, a noted psychoanalyst, believed that an instability of three factors leads a man to crime: criminalistic tendencies, mental resistance, and situation. By criminalistic tendencies are meant the individual’s subconscious desires, phobias, compulsions, and obsessions that wait for the right moment to emerge from the subconscious mind and to be acted out. He emphasizes the theory of unconscious guilt as in the neurotic, and feels that only by penetrating into the deepest layers of the human mind are we able to trace the motives that link the criminal to the past; motives of which he himself has been unaware. Through socialization, repression, and inhibition, a person develops mental resistance that, in turn, prevents criminalistic tendencies from becoming criminal behavior. Furthermore, the more the person leans toward crime (low resistance), the weaker the precipitating events would have to be to bring it out; the less the criminal leanings, the greater the precipitating events needed to call it forth. These precipitating events Abrahamsen calls the situation. We must consider all three aspects simultaneously in order to explain crime and the individual’s interaction with it. It seems plausible that some people commit crimes because they are emotionally or psychologically unstable or defective. Occasionally, one reads in the newspapers about some bizarre killing or sex crime committed by a person who is clearly mentally deranged. However, many studies of the personalities of criminals have show that most of them are psychologically normal. Furthermore, psychiatrists have often given conflicting diagnoses of criminals who have pled insanity as a defense against criminal culpability. With which of the following would the author agree? Those who engage in criminal behavior are mentally ill. Those who are mentally ill engage in criminal behavior. Psychoanalytic theory can successfully be used to explain most criminal behavior. None of the above Which of the following is true? Those who follow Freud’s teachings generally agree on a theory of crime. Abrahamsen’s theories are an extension of Freud’s own theories of criminal behavior. According to Freud’s theories, it would not be possible to understand any criminal act without exploring the motivation behind it. Most Freudians believe that those who engage in criminal behavior suffer from unhealthy egos. According to psychoanalytic theory, criminal behavior could result from an overactive superego. an underactive superego. III. an underactive id. I only II only I and II I, II, and III The best title for this passage would be Freud’s Theories of Crime Psychoanalysis and Crime Psychoanalytic Theory from Freud to Abrahamson The Link between Mental Illness and Crime All of the following are false, EXCEPT According to one theory, criminal activity can be precipitated by a particular event. Mental illness, as it relates to crime, can usually be objectively diagnosed. Psychoanalytic theory holds that it is completely within the power of the individual to make a conscious choice whether to engage in criminal behavior. If there were a completely objective way to measure mental illness, we could accurately predict which members of society would commit crimes. According to the author, criminal behavior is motivated by a neurotic desire to be caught and punished. faulty family relationships. ethnic factors. None of the above STOP. IF YOU FINISH BEFORE TIME IS CALLED, CHECK YOUR WORK. YOU MAY GO BACK TO ANY QUESTION IN THE VERBAL REASONING TEST BOOKLET.