Sign up for our newsletters! A Curable Romantic by Joseph
Skibell 1. Joseph Skibell's A Curable Romantic is filled with
scenes of love and lust and desire. What does the novel suggest
are the main differences—if any—between male and female erotic
desire?  2. The novel takes place long before the sexual
revolution. How have changing sexual mores affected the world we
live in? What has been lost? What has been gained?  3. On pages
32–33, Dr. Freud exhorts Dr. Jakob Sammelsohn to cleave to the
truth without exception: "Men of science, such as ourselves,
cannot afford to lie. Even in our private lives, we must ally
ourselves so completely with the truth that nothing will ever
turn us from it." Throughout the novel, however, Dr. Freud
continually contradicts himself and revises his thinking based
upon expediency and changing circumstances. How are we to
understand Dr. Freud's apparent hypocrisy? Is he a positive or a
negative influence on the other characters? Do you think
Skibell's fictional Dr. Freud is an accur