Within the depth-psychology corpus, 'tongue' operates simultaneously as anatomical organ, cosmogonic instrument, and psychopathological marker. The range of positions is striking. At one pole, the tongue figures as the executive agent of divine logos: Egyptian theology, particularly the Memphite theology of Ptah, locates creation itself in the tongue's repetition of the heart's thought, a formulation that Campbell and von Franz both treat as a psychologically resonant prototype of the logos principle. At another pole, von Franz reads the tongue's negative valence — the slanderous, demonically elongated tongue of folk tradition — as the agent that sustains 'the wheel of evil,' that is, the vehicle through which unintegrated shadow content circulates destructively in the collective. Freud's analysis of the 'slip of the tongue' opens a third domain: the tongue as the site where unconscious intention breaks through conscious speech, making parapraxis a royal road to hidden mental processes. Hillman extends this further, treating speech itself as alchemical operation — the tongue of fire that transmutes nigredo discourse into silvered, albedo-register language. Jaynes contributes the glossolalic dimension, linking speaking in tongues to trance states and the vestigial bicameral architecture of the mind. Together, these positions establish 'tongue' as a multi-valent threshold concept at the intersection of logos, shadow, the unconscious, and somatic expression.
In the library
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Every divine word came into existence by the thought of the heart and the commandment of the tongue. When the eyes see, the ears hear, and the nose breathes, they report to the heart. It is the heart that brings forth every issue, and the tongue that repeats the thought of the heart.
Campbell cites the Memphite theology of Ptah to argue that the tongue, as the executor of the heart's thought, is the cosmogonic instrument through which all divine and psychic creation is articulated.
Campbell, Joseph, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962thesis
the tongue signifies the logos principle, the Word. And when it is negative, it means mainly the misuse of words, as in slander. That's in many representations of devils and demons: they have very, very long tongues.
Von Franz establishes the tongue as a dual symbol of logos and its shadow, wherein the demonic elongated tongue represents the destructive, slanderous misuse of the word that perpetuates the collective 'wheel of evil.'
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997thesis
he was thought of as dwelling in the heart and especially in the tongue of all beings. The Egyptians thought of the heart as being the seat of one's soul and one's consciousness. For this reason, language and consciousness and what we today would call our soul was thought of as having its origins within the heart.
Von Franz reads the Egyptian figure of Ptah as the demiurgic soul residing in both heart and tongue, linking linguistic capacity directly to the seat of consciousness and soul.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Creation Myths, 1995thesis
The teeth and lips as the agents of the tongue's speech here stand in the roles elsewhere represented by Shu, Tefnut, and the rest. The whole pantheon, as well as the world, thus becomes organically assimilated to the cosmic body of the creator.
Campbell demonstrates that the tongue's speech-agents function as cosmic principles, so that the created world is an extension of the creator's linguistic anatomy.
Campbell, Joseph, Oriental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume II, 1962supporting
speech is a gift and that the love of speech, its peitho or persuasiveness, is a tongue of fire as strong as love's desire which can at any moment ignite any thing with the whiteness of a silvered image simply by use of an inspired word.
Hillman figures the tongue as alchemical agent, its persuasive fire capable of transforming nigredo discourse into albedo-register imagery, making therapeutic speech itself a work of psychic whitening.
Slips of the tongue are in a certain sense infectious; it is not at all easy to speak of them without making them oneself. It is not hard to detect the motivation of even the most trifling forms of them, although these do not throw any particular light on hidden mental processes.
Freud positions the slip of the tongue as the privileged site where unconscious intention disrupts conscious speech, and notes the symptomatic 'infectiousness' of these moments as evidence of their deep motivational structure.
Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917thesis
Today at Vatican celebrations of Pentecost, red is worn to symbolize the tongues of fire; and in Protestant churches, white, to symbolize the Holy Ghost, hence the English term Whitsuntide.
Jaynes contextualizes the 'tongues of fire' of Pentecost within his broader argument about glossolalia, trance, and the search for divine authorization following the breakdown of the bicameral mind.
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
Glossolalia first happens always in groups and always in the context of religious services. I am stressing the group factor, since I think this strengthening of the collective cognitive imperative is necessary for a particularly deep type of trance.
Jaynes frames speaking in tongues as a collectively induced trance phenomenon through which the right hemisphere's vestigial bicameral voice is reactivated in the absence of individual autonomous consciousness.
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, 1976supporting
In those who are 'wise' eyes, tongue, ears, and noos work at a deep level. Noos functions well with respect to understanding events: it may see within clearly.
Sullivan shows that in early Greek thought the tongue is one of several coordinated instruments through which noos (mind/intelligence) discloses or conceals inner reality, linking articulation to the depth of understanding.
Sullivan, Shirley Darcus, Psychological and Ethical Ideas What Early Greeks Say, 1995supporting
we have the impression that we are further than ever from comprehension of slips of the tongue. However, I hope I am not mistaken in thinking that in the course of our examination of the above examples an impression has formed itself in us which may be of a kind to repay further attention.
Freud acknowledges the interpretive complexity of parapraxis while insisting that slips of the tongue, however obscure, carry determinate psychological meaning worth sustained analytical attention.
Freud, Sigmund, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1917supporting
Tongue, SHE: tongue in the mouth; clapper in a bell, valve in a pump, hook of a clasp; talkative, wordy.
The I Ching's semantic field for 'tongue' extends from the literal oral organ to mechanical analogues (bell-clapper, valve), situating loquacity and verbal stimulation within a broader cosmological system of reciprocal activation.
Rudolf Ritsema, Stephen Karcher, I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, 1994aside
Whenever we wish to explain thoughts which were recorded in another tongue, we come to the conclusion that the foreign word means this — and again that it does not mean it.
Snell uses 'tongue' in its archaic sense of 'language' to reflect on the hermeneutic limits of translation, implying that the very organ of speech is implicated in the incommensurability of thought across cultural worlds.
Snell, Bruno, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953aside