ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis, based on a nineteenth-century medical model and having its roots in the hypnotic phenomena of submission and suggestion has always carried a thinly masked disdain for the "patient", defined etymologically as "the suffering one". To elaborate, all psychoanalysts have a vision of the idealized psychoanalytic performance. For Freudians, it is neutrality; for self-psychologists, it is empathy; for interpersonalists it is authenticity in participation. To delineate a distinction between mistakes and errors: the former implying the violation of a definitive rule, the latter implying a fluctuation from a perceived norm. A mistake is unequivocal. There cannot be a "right" mistake; to "mistake" is to take the wrong way. Error, on the other hand, etymologically means "to wander", to stray from the right. Mistakes in maintaining an arbitrarily defined frame are easier to catch than errors in interactions within the frame.
