“”But what I say is, that if you convince a person logically that he has nothing to cry about, he’ll stop crying. Thats Clear. Is it your conviction that he won’t?” said Lebeziatnikov
“Life would be too easy if it were so,” answered Raskolnikov
“Excuse me, excuse me; of course it would be rather difficult for Katerina Ivanova to understand, but you know that in Paris they have been conducting serious experiments as to the possibility of curing the insane, simply by means of logical argument? One professor there, a scientific man of standing, lately dead, believed in the possibility of such treatment. His idea was that theres nothing really wrong with the physical organism of the insane, and that insanity is, so to say, a logical mistake, an error of judgement, an incorrect view of things. He gradually showed the madman of his error and, would you believe it, they say he was successful! But as he made use of douches too, how far sucess was due to that treatment remains uncertain… So it seems at least.”
Raskolnikov had long ceased to listen.
-Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
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