Mental mechanisms are situational.
Mental mechanisms do not have indices of test-retest reliability or of inter-rater reliability.
The distributions of mental mechanisms by age, gender, social class, and intelligence are not established.
Mental mechanisms may be unspoken, or may be confined to a consultation during which money changes hands. Once other people are involved, the possibility exists that the supposed mental mechanisms are part of a relationship, which may have sexual connotations.
Mental mechanisms include denial, dissociation, suppression, repression, fantasy, schizoid fantasy, borderline state, psychic retreat, projection, splitting, sublimation, reaction formation, intellectualisation, rationalisation, regression, displacement, projective identification, and introjective identification, which last is facilitated by mirror neurones.