Let me recall first of all my significant observations of the female cat;  secondly, the remark of Dr. Groddeck and his use of the word Wonne (bliss, ecstatic pleasure) in connection with the function of childbirth in health;  and, thirdly, the fact that Dr. Robert Barnes, Dr. de Garis, Dr. Kathleen Vaughan, and Dr. Dick Read all insist (I think rightly) on comparing childbirth with micturition and defæcation in which, when the mechanisms are normal, there is at least the pleasure of relief, if not of something more positive.

Thus Dr. Barnes says:  "A function which is going on naturally to the accomplishment of its object may, indeed, sometimes be attended with some degree of pain;  but that pain exerts no injurious or depressing effect on the system. . . .  On the contrary a sense of ease, even of satisfaction, is felt.  Labour is no exception to this law."99  Dr. Dick Read, fifty-seven years later, says:  "When there is no abnormal, that is pathological, resistance, the stimulation of the pain receptors [the faint pain stimulus in normal childbirth which, like that in defæcation, indicates that an evacuation is necessary], is so slight that the function of evacuation is carried out freely, and with a sense more akin to pleasure than pain.100  The call to evacuate satisfies;  the desire gives rise in its earliest recognition to an emotion almost akin to elation. . . .  Upon completion there is a sense again that may be comparable to elation."101

This is getting very near to Dr. Groddeck's Wonne!

But what of two obstetricians who actually report cases of pleasurable confinements in their own experience?

According to a certain Dr. Lory:  "Quelques personnes éprouvent en accouchant un certain plaisir."102  {tr: "Some people experience a certain pleasure during childbirth."}  Is this merely idle talk?  While Dr. Hermann Fr. Kilian, an eminent German specialist of last century, referring to cases of painless labour, writes as follows:  "These cases which are certainly rare, though wholly authentic, are deserving of the most serious consideration;  and to them I can add one of my own - to wit, that of a woman whose labour not only caused her no pain but actually gave her feelings of the utmost pleasure" (ein Gefühl hoher Wollust).103

Bearing in mind that our norm, our standard, should in these sick and degenerate days not be the average, or even the second best, but the very best, what possible justification is there for selecting anything short of the most successful childbirth as the normal birth?  If then the weight of the a priori reasoning is in favour of regarding childbirth as a function which sould be pleasurable, and if cases, however exceptional, of pleasurable childbirth are on record, why should we be content with merely painless childbirth as our norm?  Obviously it is our duty to aim at nothing less than perfection, and since we cannot conceive of the perfection of a vitally bodily function so closely related to consciousness as childbirth, unless it is pleasurable, we have no alternative but to set up pleasurable childbirth as the norm, the standard to which we should aspire for all healthy, well-conditioned women.