ABSTRACT
Childbirth is the ultimate expression of human creativity, but all the institutions of patriarchal culture have been constructed to deny the primitive power of the female. Psychoanalysis and feminism have ironically dealt with childbirth in the same way: they have devalued the experience. The author presents a brief history of the masculinization and medicalization of childbirth and argues that, on an unconscious level, this history has been an attempt to control and dominate women. The concept of childbirth as a painful ordeal in particular creates a pathway through which man can intervene in female creativity and dominate it. The intricate dance of domination and submission between women and their physicians provides comfort to both sexes in the confrontation with carnality and mortality that childbirth represents.
