Demonstrating details of tongue and mouth movements to two male children made them aware of the connection of these movements with genital conflicts and was followed by disappearance of the speech impediment. The author emphasizes the central importance of the tongue as a spontaneously assertive organ even before birth and suggests that since speech impediment is largely confined to males, it may arise from displacement to the tongue by way of the phallustongue

equation of desires and fears involving especially the assertive, exhibitionistic aspects of male genitality.