Memoria Autobiográfica, Sentidos y Fenomenología: Recuerdos de Tipo Traumático en Ex-combatientes y Veteranos de la Guerra de Malvinas

According to cognitive psychology, autobiographical memory is involved in tasks associated with consolidating, evoking, and forgetting personal life episodes. Autobiographical memories formed from traumatic experiences, such as military combat, are thought to assume distinctive properties. The study aims to analyze the written reports of former male combatants and veterans regarding traumatic events experienced during the Falklands War. An exploratory and qualitative study was conducted based on the interpretive paradigm of grounded theory and using purposive theoretical sampling. Descriptive, axial, and selective methods were employed to analyze 141 written forms. Three groups of emergent categories were identified based on the respondents’ discourse: phenomenological components, death/death risk, and permanence. The combination of cognitive and temporal aspects stresses, as the central category, how current the experiences reported are for ex-combatants and veterans. The authors suggest the implementation of psychosocial interventions aimed at the recognition of these traumatic memories, so that they can be incorporated into the collective narrative of the Falklands War.