The paper describes and critically analyzes the understanding of defence mechanisms in classical psychoanalysis, as well as the dilemmas and changes in this tradition, with an emphasis on the mechanism of projection. Further, the understanding of distorted defensive thinking and the empirical verification of psychoanalytic concepts in the cognitive tradition is presented. The author defends the thesis that the dilemmas of psychoanalytic understanding arise from relying on the theory of instincts, at the core of which is the model of exclusion. To this model, he opposes the theory of mutual regulation of affects in relationships of empathic attunement, which explains the intergenerational roots of defensive behaviour in children and represents the basis for an adequate understanding and transformation of distorted perception and attribution in adult interpersonal relationships.
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