Errors are a part of life and clinical mistakes are frequent. The author examines some of the
ways that errors or mistakes permeate all areas of life, pointing out their frequency in human
interaction, in research, in ordinary judgment, whether in daily largely trivial matters, or in
significant matters of life and death. In some instances, a psychoanalyst might point out an
unconscious motive for the errors, but in the history of psychoanalysis, clinical errors have
often been shown to be beneficial to the treatment, to the extent that they enter into the
psychoanalytic discourse. The author presents some clinical material drawn from his work with
two supervisees.