The womb, a symbol of fertility connoting the female body, nourishes the future baby through holding and the flow of blood. This book takes us into the world of painful perpetrations against women, their bodies, and their psyches, terroristic acts that disrupt their independence and the assertion of their creativity. The papers collected here provide a counterforce, opening freedom and generativity through psychoanalytic understanding, personal experience, and social history. The four editors are psychoanalytically oriented and committed to understanding issues of gender and recognition of women within the historical context of a patriarchal society. All have been active participants in Section III (Women, Gender, and Psychoanalysis) of Division 39 (Division of Psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological