This empirical study attempted to develop an original theoretical framework aiming at understanding the psychosocial changes that occurred in the long - term among families living in a post conflict setting. During the last fifteen years, Kosovo has been transitioning from warfare and organized violence to stabilization and state building under the supervision and with the support of the international community. Drawing on different contributions from analytical psychology, attachment theory and the systemic family theory , the theoretical framework focused primarily on family relationships and observed them through both a psychological and a psychosocial perspective. The empirical study attempted to observe the complex relational matrix interconnecting individuals and families with their broader context encompassing societal, economic, cultural and political facets. A total of thirty-five families belonging to different ethnic and socio-economic groups participated in the study, originating from different areas of the region . They were exposed to war events with different intensity and to gross violations of human rights that occurred between the years 1998-1999. The research explored the process of psychological and psychosocial transformation that occurred in family life by focusing on the quality of family attachment behaviours between children and caregivers and on care - giving/parenting styles. Moreover, the impact of the process of 'internationalization' was taken into account, which has been defined as the whole of the interactions involving the local population and international community, taking place both in Kosovo as well as in third countries. The role of technology and social media in providing opportunities for regular contacts with relatives and friends living abroad and strengthening further family relationships was also considered. The results showed that when families were exposed to harsh daily stressors, marginalization and discrimination even before war-related events they were more likely to display limited family psychosocial functioning, inadequate parenting and caregiving and mothers to report more frequently psychopathological symptoms of depression and anxiety. Secondly, attachment security within family and responsive parenting styles appeared to have a mediational role towards potentially traumatic experiences and adverse environmental conditions by enhancing the capacity of positively coping with adversities at both a personal and family level. Thirdly , the long-term effects of war experiences seemed to be also linked to changes in the society, in particular to the transformations caused by the process of 'internationalization', such as the promotion of a human rights based culture, law enforcement and infrastructural interventions aiming at developing communication systems and information technology. The study discusses the potential factors supporting lasting resilience and the Adversity Activated Development responses in individuals and families.

The aim of this research is to explore the unconscious elements that fuels the ‘radioactive atmosphere’ of psychoanalytic institutions - unconscious sources of the chronic conflicts that sometimes plague the relationships between members of psychoanalytical societies and obscure the path of a constructive resolution of conflict that leads to progress and further development. The starting point of this thesis was Hinshelwood’s (1999) idea about the displacement of negative countertransference feelings from patients to colleagues as a source of tensions amongst analysts. The first part of the thesis (Chapters 1-4) explores the development of the ideas on countertransference and its uses for a better understanding of ‘the patient’, surveys different perspectives on the life in psychoanalytic organizations, and points to the existence of a link between analysts’ analytic attitude towards patients and their attitude towards colleagues. The second part of the thesis presents the empirical study set to test the correspondence between the analyst’s omniscient attitude towards patient and arrogant attitude towards colleagues (Chapter 6). The preliminary findings indicates that ‘sibling rivalry’ and complicated relations during training as one source of conflict in psychoanalytic institutions, and are further investigated in the empirical research presented in Chapter 7, using the psychoanalytically informed research interview as an experimental situation, an original research method. The final chapter examines the main findings of this empirical research.

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