Psychoanalysts themselves never reached consensus on what projection is

Evidence

Allport was not alone in the difficulty he had defining projection and distinguishing it from other related phenomena. Sigmund Freud himself was famously fuzzy on the topic. Anna Freud (1936) elaborated on projection in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, but that definitive work also failed to provide a detailed or thorough explanation of projection. For the 50th anniversary of that volume, an extensive series of discussions on defense mechanisms involving Anna Freud and other psychoanalysts was published. When the conversation turned to projection, however, the participants concluded that there was no consensus on how to explain or even define the phenomenon (see Sandler & Freud, 1985, pp. 136–46). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2349

Allport was not alone in the difficulty he had defining projection and distinguishing it from other related phenomena. Sigmund Freud himself was famously fuzzy on the topic. Anna Freud (1936) elaborated on projection in The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence, but that definitive work also failed to provide a detailed or thorough explanation of projection. For the 50th anniversary of that volume, an extensive series of discussions on defense mechanisms involving Anna Freud and other psychoanalysts was published. When the conversation turned to projection, however, the participants concluded that there was no consensus on how to explain or even define the phenomenon (see Sandler & Freud, 1985, pp. 136–46). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2349

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader fact/definition problem in psychology — concepts that survive as folk psychology but resist operational definition, similar to temperament debates.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2349; , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2349