| Sumario: | Since the end of the nineteen sixties, glossolalia has been my main area of research. This interest has not only been directed at the psychology of speaking in tongues, but also towards the history of this phenomenon in Finland, together with its linguistic and liturgical function. Hjalmar Sundén begins his theoretical considerations from the vantage point of social psychology. He indulges in mild polemics with the German school of psychology which tries above all to see religious experiences as the result of deep psychological structures in the human mind and the numinous feeling. The distinctive feature of Sundén's role theory is that he not only places religion in the context of social psychology, but that he also introduces perception psychology. Any mythological role description, with God, may function as a pattern of perception for a religious experience. For a restructuring process of this kind to be released in the individual a special motivating factor is required.
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