Shrinks should never do therapy on talk shows.
Why?
Because doing that will almost always result in not high quality therapy.
Basically, talk show therapy sucks, so don't do it.
What's the gap? Hard to see one, but think about this:
Doing pottery outside leads to very earthy-looking pots. So, don't do it.
Who says earthy-looking pots are to be avoided?
What about this:
Doing pottery outside leads to less than high quality pots. So don't do it!
Who says we shouldn't do things that don't lead to high quality pots?
(E) helps fill this gap.
(A) is too extreme. We don't need to assume that shrinks should never entertain a broad audience. What about at a bar mitzvah?
(B) is a convoluted premise booster. It explains, perhaps, why giving therapy on a talk show will lead to bad advice, but we don't need to support that premise - it's fine on it's own. If you negate (B), we learn that the context is not more important than the nature of the advice. So what? Couldn't the context still be really important?
(C) is super tempting - but in the end, it's too extreme. For one, it broadly addresses giving psychotherapy. The problem is about what psychotherapists should do. We don't need to outlaw some amateur giving potentially bad psychotherapy to her friend - we only need that psychotherapists shouldn't do it.
Furthermore, we don't need to outlaw psychotherapy that has even a slight chance of being bad - we need to outlaw the kind that the question mentions: nearly always less than high quality.
Since people struggle with (C) and (E) a lot, here's some more about those:
The difference between the two is indeed that (C) states that you shouldn't provide help if there's ANY chance of it being bad (low quality), while (E) is less strong, stating that you should not provide this help if it's PROBABLY going to be bad.
The textbook way to look at this is that the question is asking for a necessary assumption -- in other words, an assumption without which the argument cannot make sense. In general, when between two similar answers for a necessary assumption question, choose the weaker answer. Why though?
To think about it quite simplistically, if I have to pay for a suit that costs $350 (tax included), and I ask which of the following amount is necessary for me to buy that suit - $350 or $400 -- we'd choose $350. The $400 will cover it and then some, so it's sufficient, but it is not necessary.
Another way to think about it is that if you negate each of them, only one destroys the argument. In the above analogy, if I say that I have less than $350, I cannot buy the suit, but if I say I have less than $400, I may or may not be able to purchase the suite.
With the actual LSAT question, the argument is, to paraphrase: psychotherapists should never provide psychological help on talk shows since if they do, they'll be expected to entertain the audience, and entertaining the audience is almost always incompatible with providing high quality psychotherapy.
The gap is that the argument assumes that psychotherapists should not provide psychotherapy if such help is "nearly always incompatible with providing high-quality help". It's actually not outrageous to think that this assumption does not have to be true. [Perhaps it's OK to provide low quality help to help more people; or perhaps bad help is better than no help at all.]
Remember that an assumption, if negated, should destroy the argument. If we negate (C), we find that it's OK to provide psychotherapy if there's ANY chance that it will be less than high quality. Well, this doesn't really affect the argument since we're dealing with a situation in which that help is LIKELY to be bad.
If we negate (E), we find that it's OK to provide psychotherapy when it's LIKELY to be bad. That goes directly against what the argument seems to assume! If that's true, why would the psychologist argue that psychotherapists shouldn't do talk-show therapy?!
Another way to think about this is that, in effect, (C) would mean that you should NEVER give psychotherapy since there's always some chance it will be less than high-quality. Can a psychotherapist guarantee that EVERY session will be high quality? (C) goes too far, and while it would make the argument technically valid, that assumption goes above and beyond what is needed, so it's not necessary.
Analogously, if I say that you should not take Valium because it's likely to make you drowsy. I'm assuming that you shouldn't take things that are LIKELY to make you drowsy. I'm not assuming that you should avoid any drug which has ANY chance of making you drowsy -- that might be every drug ever invented! If I were to say that the rule is you shouldn't take ANYTHING that might make you drowsy we would indeed arrive at the same conclusion, but it's overkill. Though perhaps I'm beating a dead (or drowsy) horse at this point.
Does that clear it up?
#officialexplanation
