Your Daily Dostoyevsky, part the second

(Lebezyatnikov said):"...what I mean is that if you can reason with a person logically and show him that he really has nothing to cry about, then he'll stop crying. It's simple. But I expect your view is that he won't?"

"Life would be too easy then," Raskolnikov replied.

"As you please, as you please; of course, Katerina Ivanovna would have some difficulty in understanding; but are you aware that in Paris there have already been some serious experiments relating to the possibility of treating the insane by means of the simple influence of logical reasoning? There was a certain professor there who died not so long ago, a serious scientist who believed that such a treatment was possible. His basic idea was that there is nothing particularly wrong with the organism of the insane person, and that insanity is, as it were, a logical error, an error of judgement, a mistaken view of things. He would refute the arguments of his patient step by step and, would you believe it, it's said he achieved results that way! But in view of that fact that he accompanied this treatment with cold baths, those results should, of course, be viewed with some scepticism...At least, I think they should..."

Raskolnikov had stopped listening long ago.

-Crime and Punishment