The so-called Freudian mistake is usually considered as the interfence of at least two thoughts. In this article the question is asked which linguistic description comes nearest to the psychoanalytic interpretation of the Freudian slip. The best linguistic description is the one that presupposes the distorted co-ordination of at least two centences. This holds even for mistakes that are not purely verbal. An interpretation of the alleged Freudian mistake always requires information from the context and the situation; a description in linguistic terms never reveals the purposes and desires of the speaker.