Within the depth-psychology corpus, ‘error’ appears across several distinct conceptual registers that rarely collapse into one another. The Yogācāra-inflected tradition, represented here by Bryant’s commentary on Patañjali, treats error as ontological misattribution — the superimposition of a false form onto an actual substrate, epitomized by the rope-snake illusion and correctable only by valid, non-contradictable perception. Hillman’s archetypal psychology reverses the evaluative valence almost entirely: for Hillman, slips and errors are precisely where ‘errant cause’ breaks through rational control, making error epistemically productive rather than pathological. The corpus thus holds two competing axioms in tension — error as cognitive defect demanding correction, and error as psychic necessity carrying deeper truth. A third register, drawn from neuroscience and decision-making research (Schultz, Paulus, Rubia), constructs error as a computational signal — the reward prediction error — that drives learning, behavioral adaptation, and, when dysregulated, addiction. The Taoist I Ching contributes yet another valence: ‘no error’ as the hexagrammatic ideal of sincerity aligned with natural timing, where error names deviation from the Tao rather than a cognitive failure. The tensions among these positions — error-as-illusion, error-as-depth, error-as-signal, error-as-deviation — constitute the conceptual field the serious student must navigate.
depth psychology starts from this perspective and in principle continues to look for its truths in errors in which deeper, more central necessities lie. Moreover, it regards reason itself from a viewpoint built upon errors
Hillman argues that depth psychology is constitutively grounded in error, treating slips, deceptions, and equivocations not as failures but as the privileged sites where the soul’s deeper necessities break through rational control.
, Re-Visioning Psychology, 1975thesis
error is the result of the superimposition of wrong knowledge, mithyā-jñānam, onto an object… mistaking a rope for a snake: one is superimposing the form of a snake upon something that is not a snake.
Bryant, following Vyāsa and Vijñānabhikṣu, defines error as the superimposition of false knowledge onto an actual object — a vrtti that is distinguishable from valid perception because it can be contradicted by subsequent accurate cognition.
, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: A New Edition, Translation, and Commentary, 2009thesis
‘Error’ refers to the difference between the can that came out and the low expectation of getting exactly that one, irrespective of whether I made an error or something else went wrong.
Schultz introduces reward prediction error as a precisely defined computational quantity — the signed difference between received and expected reward — entirely distinct from moral or cognitive mistake.
, Dopamine reward prediction error coding, 2016thesis
The existence of such neuronal error signals suggests that some brain processes operate on the principle of error learning. The dopamine error signal could be a teaching signal that affects neuronal plasticity
Schultz argues that the dopamine prediction error signal functions as a neuroplasticity teaching signal in reward-learning circuits including the striatum, frontal cortex, and amygdala.
, Dopamine reward prediction error coding, 2016supporting
the drug effects mimic a positive dopamine reward prediction error, as they are not compared against a prediction, and thus induce continuing strong dopamine stimulation on their postsynaptic receptors
Schultz explains addiction as the hijacking of the prediction-error mechanism: drugs simulate an unfiltered positive error signal, bypassing the corrective comparison against expectation and producing unrelenting dopaminergic overstimulation.
, Dopamine reward prediction error coding, 2016supporting
stimulant-using subjects adjust their decision making less as a function of errors as evidenced by attenuated behavioral and neural substrate activation patterns.
Paulus proposes that stimulant users show blunted sensitivity to error-rate variation, manifested in reduced behavioral strategy adjustment and attenuated insular activation, indicating a dysregulated error-processing substrate.
, Reduced Behavioral and Neural Activation in Stimulant Users to Different Error Rates during Decision Makingsupporting
stimulant users changed response options less as a function of varying error rates and were… they selected fewer win-stay and lose-shift consistent responses
Paulus documents that stimulant users fail to modulate win-stay/lose-shift strategy as error rates change, demonstrating a specific deficit in error-contingent behavioral updating.
, Reduced Behavioral and Neural Activation in Stimulant Users to Different Error Rates during Decision Makingsupporting
No error means no wandering mind and no arbitrary action… as long as the thunder is without error, myriad things also are without error. This is the image of no error.
The Taoist I Ching frames ‘no error’ as alignment between inner sincerity and natural timing, defining error negatively as wandering intention or arbitrary action that violates the Tao’s spontaneous order.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting
No error means no wandering mind and no arbitrary action… the Tao of perfect sincerity without error to flourish, fulfilling themselves and fulfilling others, responding to the times of nature
Liu I-ming’s commentary equates freedom from error with wholehearted sincerity and temporal attunement, positioning error as the consequence of self-imposed mental deviation from the Tao.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting
if thought is correct, then action is correct; if thought is wrong, action is wrong. If one can be without error within, then one will naturally be without error outwardly
Liu Yiming traces error from its inner origin in thought, establishing an inside-out causality whereby internal rectification of intention is the necessary precondition for external, behavioral freedom from error.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting
This model… focuses on the notion of a body prediction error, i.e. the difference between the value of the anticipated/predicted and value of the current interoceptive state.
Paulus extends the prediction-error framework into the interoceptive domain, proposing that addiction involves dysregulated body prediction error — a mismatch between anticipated and actual internal bodily states.
, The role of interoception and alliesthesia in addiction, 2009supporting
Fidelity means wholehearted sincerity without duplicity… if it is not correct, there will be disaster, and it will not be beneficial to go anywhere.
Liu I-ming renders the hexagram ‘Fidelity (No Error)’ as a state of undivided sincerity, where error names the departure from wholeness that invites disaster.
, The Taoist I Ching, 1986supporting
The error lies in the use of religious explanations that leave no room for other interpretations, including those that are well grounded empirically.
Pargament identifies a specific type of religious error as the exclusive use of theological causal narratives that foreclose empirically grounded alternative interpretations, resulting in scapegoating.
, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001aside
in SEM the researcher must model error as well as the variables… knowing the residual of one indicator helps in knowing the residual associated with another indicator.
Laudet uses ‘error’ in the strictly statistical sense of correlated residuals in structural equation modeling, modeling error covariance among recovery-related indicators as substantively meaningful variance.