wpautop?

Help needed for a self-professed PHP hack.

I’m trying to locate the function in the wp modules that automatically creates the <p> tags around a post</p>. More specifically the <p></p> tags that automatically wrap around:

<?php the_content(); ?>

I am not wanting the_content to be wrapped with anything. The only thing that I can figure is something with wpautop, but I’m not understanding the php for this? Any gurus that can help, thanks in advance. Running WP 1.2