Our Attitude to Fertilization and Conception

This article reexamines attitudes toward fertilization and conception and identifies some of the deeper aspects involved in the creation of a human being. Reproduction is a closed feedback control system with calculable values in which the reference input is determined by an existent or nonexistent desire for a child. The desire for a child is often obsessive arising from a Herculean mania or Messianic fantasy. In such cases the child is made to be the mere object of personal desires. In contrast there are 4 aspects of fertilization and conception that belong to a deeper level of understanding: the feeling of being moved the experience of necessity the anticipatory feeling of certainty and the creation of a 3rd being. This process is quite different from the purposive approach of producing common among neurotics. The Herculean attitude claims the right to form things according to ones own arbitrary decisions or irrational motives; the attitude of letting the child come implies a readiness to accept ones fate with respect to fertility. The attitude of active preparedness attentive silence and of dedicating oneself to something without giving oneself up comprises a desirable middle ground between the 2 extremes of energetic activity and apathetic passivity. As transformers of creation physicians are urged to recognize aspects of fertility and conception that belong to a deeper level of understanding and to move toward an attitude of letting a child come.