So now we will leave the analysis of errors. But there is one thing more which I might impress upon you: to keep in mind, as a model, the method by which we have studied these phenomena. You can perceive from these examples what the aim of our psychology is. Our purpose is not merely to describe and classify the phenomena, but to conceive them as brought about by the play of forces in the mind, as expressions of tendencies striving towards a goal, which work together or against one another. We are endeavouring to attain a _dynamic conception_ of mental phenomena. In this conception, the trends we merely infer are more prominent than the phenomena we perceive. So we will probe no further into errors; but we may still take a fleeting glimpse over the breadth of this whole field, in the course of which we shall both meet with things already known and come upon the tracks of others that are new. In so doing, we will keep to the division into three groups of slips of the tongue, made at the beginning of our study, together with the co-ordinate forms of slips of the pen, misreading, mis-hearing; of forgetting with its subdivisions according to the object forgotten (proper names, foreign words, resolutions, impressions); and of mislaying, mistaking, and losing, objects. Mistakes, in so far as they concern us, are to be grouped partly under the head of forgetting, partly under acts erroneously performed (picking up the wrong objects, etc.). We have already treated slips of the tongue in great detail, yet there is still something to add. There are certain small affective manifestations related to slips of the tongue which are not entirely without interest. No one likes to think he has made a slip of the tongue; one often fails to hear it when made by oneself, but never when made by someone else. 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. If, for instance, anyone pronounces a long vowel as a short one, in consequence of a disturbance over the word, no matter how motivated, he will as a result soon after lengthen a short vowel and commit a new slip in compensation for the first. The same thing occurs if anyone pronounces a diphthong indistinctly and carelessly, for instance, “ew” or “oy” as “i”; he tries to correct it by changing a subsequent “i” into “ew” or “oy.” Some consideration relating to the hearer seems to be behind this behaviour, as though he were not to be allowed to think that the speaker is indifferent how he treats his mother-tongue. The second, compensating distortion actually has the purpose of drawing the hearer’s attention to the first and assuring him that it has not escaped the speaker either. The most frequent, insignificant, and simple forms of slips consist in contractions and