Autobiographical memory of war veterans: A mixed-studies systematic review

Abstract

This paper reviewed articles on autobiographical memories of veterans who fought several major battles around the world. A total of 28 articles, reporting 11 quantitative, 16 qualitative, and 1 mixed-methods study, were identified through a search conducted in 11 major databases. Convergent thematic analysis of the findings extracted five recurrent themes: (1) memory features, (2) memory content, (3) self and memory, (4) culture and memory, and (5) theoretical accounts. Veterans’ memories were mostly aligned with the hegemonic narratives, although many of them were the depiction of atrocities (theme 1). Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental disorders recalled less specific and less coherent autobiographical memories (theme 2); their retrieval was influenced by split identity—combatant versus veteran identity, generational identity, and political ideology (theme 3). War outcome, dominant public narratives, political environment, and myths prevailing in the society influenced the memory recall (theme 4). While qualitative studies used Erickson’s identity theory to explain how personal identity in conjunction with social identity helped to construct veterans’ memories, quantitative studies used Car-Fa-X model to explain why veterans with various mental health conditions predominantly produced overgeneral memories (theme 5). Findings are discussed through the current theories of autobiographical memory.

Keywords

autobiographical memory dominant narrative post-traumatic stress disorder self social-political context war veteran

Introduction

Autobiographical memory (AM) refers to the memory of significant life events that are unique to an individual. Many people who have experienced the same event, such as a concert or combat, could also share AMs. This article focuses on the AMs of war veterans who fought for several major battles around the world. The purpose is to systematically review studies examining the features of veterans’ memories and factors influencing their remembering. Research has shown that veterans’ memories are influenced by war outcomes (Campos, 2008) in conjunction with their post-war mental conditions (Engelhard et al., 2008). Many veterans are found to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after the war, resulting in reduced AM specificity (Brown et al., 2013; McNally et al., 1995). Two factors also make it difficult for them to recall AMs adequately: first, their split identity—combatant identity versus veteran identity (Lomsky-Feder, 2004), and second, a post-war political atmosphere which could be either welcoming or unwelcoming (Campos, 2008).

It is crucial to examine veterans’ memories for several reasons. First, this kind of memory supplements the construction of national history and helps boost national pride. It helps educate younger generations about the contributions the veterans made to safeguard their respective nations. Second, veterans’ memory could be seen as cultural scripts for all. For some researchers, veterans’ memoirs are “didactic tales or implicit guide” for the society in general (Dwyer, 2011; Galmarini, 2014). Third, autobiographies written by the veterans are often seen as a psychological process to reconstruct self to align with the recurrent societal norms and expectations (Galmarini, 2014). Fourth, veterans’ memories can be used as tools to assess popular narratives concerning the war (Lomsky-Feder, 2004; Trott, 2013). Finally, veterans’ memories could portray the dreams and expectations of the generation, which could offer guidelines for the political leaders and policy makers to formulate appropriate sociopolitical, economic, and educational programs.

Considering the importance of the topic, we decided to conduct this mixed-studies systematic review. Our initial literature search identified no systematic, narrative, or meta-analytic review published in the area, therefore offering strong justification for the current review. However, several reviews on AM for traumatic events were found (Brewin, 2007; Moore and Zoellner, 2007; Piefke and Glienke, 2017), but none of them addressed veterans’ AM. The veterans’ memory has been studied in psychology, anthropology, oral history, and sociology since the First World War (WWI). As they studied it from different theoretical perspectives using different research methods, we thought a mixed-studies systematic review would be the most appropriate way forward. This kind of review has been encouraged in the recent years as it can synthesize results from studies using diverse methods which provide a rich and highly practical understanding of complex issues (Pluye and Hong, 2014). We were encouraged to conduct this mixed-studies review because veterans’ AMs are complex; it has cognitive, cultural, and health dimensions and studied concurrently in multiple disciplines.

Veterans as research participants are unique because they have gone through extraordinary life experiences and are expected to hold special memories that often merge with personal and national boundaries (Conway and Haque, 1999; Holmes and Conway, 1999). A closer examination of veterans’ AMs is therefore required for an understanding of underlying cognitive processes that may regulate the remembering of those memories. The construction of AMs is quite complex, as demonstrated in a cognitive model called the Self-Memory System (SMS) (Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). This model, which received widespread attention since it was proposed, contains conceptual representations of the self, goal structures, autobiographical conceptual knowledge, and highly specific episodic memories (Conway and Jobson, 2012). For this model, the working self of the remembering individual operates simultaneously with the conceptual self to generate patterns of activation within the hierarchically organized autobiographical knowledge base. While the working self comprises a motivational hierarchy of goals and sub-goals, the autobiographical knowledge base contains knowledge with varying specificity, stretching from event-specific episodic knowledge to abstract self-conceptual knowledge. The conceptual self, recently incorporated in the SMS framework, contains the socially constructed schema and categories that define the self, other people, and an individual’s typical interaction with the environment. It evolves from socialization, schooling, religious practices, and is often shaped by cultural elements such as popular stories and fairy tales, myths, and media exposures.

While the above model has been developed based on numerous psychological studies on AM in a wide variety of populations including healthy adults and those with various mental disorders, such as depression (Haque et al., 2014; Kuyken and Dalgleish, 1995; Van Vreeswijk and De Wilde, 2004), schizophrenia (Corcoran and Frith, 2003; Elvevåg et al., 2003), PTSD (Williams et al., 2007), and borderline personality disorder (Kremers et al., 2004), studies on veterans’ AM in the laboratory setting are quite limited. Several laboratory studies in which word cues induced memories examined memory specificity and its association with PTSD and depression. This line of quantitative research could not elucidate the larger sociocultural context believed to be influential in the remembering of veterans’ memories (Nelson and Fivush, 2004).

Veterans’ AMs gathered from other sources, such as diaries, autobiographies, audio-records, and oral history interviews, could be more useful to examine their link with culture. Therefore, for a comprehensive understanding of veterans’ memory, multiple types of data gathered through different methods should be examined. With this in mind, this review goes beyond a single discipline of psychology to incorporate scholarly works from other disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, and oral history. We anticipate that this multidisciplinary review, the first of its kind, will enable us to offer a comprehensive understanding of veteran memories, their underlying cognitive processes, and how they are linked with trauma and psychopathology.

The overarching aim of this review is to summarize the current state of knowledge on veterans’ memory with five specific objectives. First, what are the main characteristics of veterans’ AM? Second, do war veterans suffering from PTSD and other mental disorders recall less specific and less coherent AMs? Third, are recollections of AMs influenced by split identity often possessed by war veterans? Fourth, what role does the sociopolitical context play in the remembering of veterans’ memories? Finally, what kind of theoretical accounts have been used to explain war veterans’ AM?

Method

We adopted the mixed-studies systematic review approach which enables us to review, appraise, and synthesize the qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods evidence (Heyvaert et al., 2011). The protocol of the review has been registered with PROSPERO (registration no. CRD42018081984). We followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Statement guidelines (Moher et al., 2009) for this review.

Eligibility criteria

To identify studies on veterans’ memories across diverse disciplines, we extend our inclusion criteria to all scholarly articles published in any discipline using any methods (see Table 1).

Table 1.

List of inclusion and exclusion criteria.

	Inclusion criteria	Exclusion criteria
Target population	War veterans	Veterans with traumatic brain injury or severe psychiatric illness leading to the absence of insight
Key area of interest	Studies with veterans’ autobiographical memory (life story, oral history, memoir, etc.)
Research design	Qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods	Editorials, commentaries, conference abstracts, protocols, review articles, letters to the editor
Language	Studies published in English	Studies published in languages other than English
Era	All years
Quality (MMAT)	Studies with a score of >0%	Studies with a score of 0%
Fields of study	All fields
Publication status	Published research	Unpublished research

MMAT: Mixed-Methods Appraisal Tool.

Information sources

Literature search was conducted in the following databases: Cochrane Library via Wiley (1992–2017), PsycINFO via Ovid (1806–2017), PsycARTICLE via Ovid (1806–2017), EMBASE via Ovid (1947–February 2018), MEDLINE via Ovid (1946–2017), PILOTS (Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress) via ProQuest (1975–2017), PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest Central, and Google Scholar. In addition, we covered some other well-known sources for eligible studies, which include full-text journal databases such as Science Direct, SpringerLink, Wiley, open access journal databases such as BioOne, PubMedCentral, and DOAJ. Finally, the forward and backward search was carried out.

Search

The three main keywords, autobiographical memory, war, and veteran, were analyzed to accumulate thesaurus terms. Thus, terms such as “Life narratives,” “Memory,” “Recall,” “Recollection,” “Recovered memories” were searched along with AM. Similarly, “Conflict,” “Fighting,” “Combat,” “Struggle,” “Warfare,” “Battle” for the term “war” and “Soldier,” “Retired,” “Virtuoso,” “Expert,” “Experienced” for “veteran” were entered in the searches. The search term was entered with various combinations using AND/OR. Since there was no previous systematic review on war veterans’ AM, we did not impose any limit to the time period in the literature. Results of each database were documented in a separate MS Excel sheet. In addition, we created an alert for each database so that notice was given whenever new evidence was added in that particular source.

Study selection

The first and the last author independently went through the article selection process using Covidence (www.covidence.org). The first author ran all the database searches resulting in 1779 records. Next, these records were imported to Covidence. The system automatically removed 152 duplicate records leaving 1627 for the title and abstract screening. Based on the inclusion/exclusion criteria, both authors independently screened titles and abstracts for full-text review. The screening excluded 1331 records leaving 296 for full-text review. The full-text assessment further excluded 268 articles leaving 28 articles for final review out of which 11 reported quantitative studies, 16 qualitative, and 1 mixed-methods study (see Figure 1). Disagreements between reviewers were resolved through discussion.

Figure 1.

PRISMA flow chart of literature search.

Data extraction process

The first author extracted the key information, which included the author(s) and year, participants or materials (in case of published memoirs), war, participant’s country, study objective, design, data collection method, measures of AM, other measures, and analytical process. The results section of each of the articles was directly imported to NVivo 11 (QSR International Pty Ltd, 2018) for qualitative synthesis. The last author verified the extracted data before synthesis.

Synthesis of results

We followed convergent qualitative synthesis design in which results from the quantitative, qualitative, and mixed studies were transformed to generate important and recurrent themes regarding the phenomenon of interest (Pluye and Hong, 2014). This process was done in six phases (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Phase 1 involved becoming familiar with the data through multiple readings. In phase 2, critical observations related to veterans’ AM from each study were extracted and coded. Accumulated codes were then analyzed and categorized to generate major themes in phase 3. In phase 4, themes were reviewed and refined in light of the overall data, which, in turn, resulted in a potential thematic “map.” Phase 5 involved defining and naming each theme through rigorous analysis. Finally, in phase 6, the final analysis of the themes was presented with illustrative extracts.

Quality assessment

The quality of the studies was assessed using the Mixed-Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT)–version 2011 (Pluye et al., 2011). Four criteria were set for each of the quantitative and qualitative studies. As for the mixed-methods study, three separate criteria were added. For this review, the criteria for quantitative non-randomized studies were used (see Supplementary Material 1). Although the original developers did not propose any statistical indicator, we followed a rating scale for MMAT, ranging from 0% (meeting none of the criteria) to 100% (meeting all of the criteria), used in another review (Tsimicalis et al., 2016). An article was included if its MMAT score was above 0%.

Results

Study characteristics

Participants and materials

Data for the 28 reviewed studies were generated from both human participants and memoirs. More than 1000 male veterans took part in autobiographical memory test (AMT) (n = 461), measures of memory consistency (n = 349), or autobiographical and oral life history interviews (n = 250+). As for memoirs, more than 250 records were assessed, including autobiographies, autobiographical interviews published in newspapers, letters, diaries, and audio-records (see table 2).

Table 2.

Characteristics and key findings of the reviewed studies.

Author (year), country	Participants/materials and war	Study design	Measures of AM	Analyses	Key findings
Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder (2009), Israel	62(20 Arab–Israeli War (1948)42 Yom Kippur War (1973))	Qualitative interview	OLHI	Narrative synthesis	• Generational identity shapes veterans’ AM • The 1948 canonical generation is obedient to the hegemonic narrative • The 1973 non-canonical generation is less glorious but had more freedom to voice memories and express critical outlook
Bonnin (2016), Argentina	Unspecified number of unrecognized war veteransMalvinas War	Qualitative	AMI	Narrative synthesis	• Unrecognized veterans’ stories are shaped in a way which is not compatible with the hegemonic narratives about the war, thus receiving an unequal legal treatment
Briggs (2016), UK	Memoir of Harry PatchWWI	Qualitative	Memoir	Content analysis	• Patch’s account discloses tense interactions between psychic processes and social discourses after mass violence • Memoir highlights divergent and fragmentary (re)constructions of memory, raising broader questions about the unsettled reception of the WWI in contemporary Britain
Brown et al. (2013), USA	28(PTSD 12, non-PTSD 16)OIE/OIF	Cross-sectional analytic	AMT	ANOVAMANOVA	• PTSD group generated more overgeneral AMs and future events • Incorporated more content associated with combat when remembering the past or thinking about the future
Brown et al. (2014), USA	28(PTSD 12, non-PTSD 16)OIE/OIF	Cross-sectional analytic	AMT	ANOVAs, t tests	• PTSD group generated more external than internal details for past or imagining future events • Fewer internal details were associated with greater symptom severity
Burnell et al. (2009), UK	10British male veterans (80–86 years)WWII	QualitativeIn-depth interview	AMI	Narrative analysis	• Three types of narratives: coherent, reconciled, and incoherent • The themes identified three aspects of social support: • Comradeship and communication, family support and communication, and societal support and opinion • Veterans with coherent narratives reported more positive perceptions of their war experience and of the war’s outcomes, more positive experiences of communication with family in later life, and more positive perceptions of societal opinion despite having similar traumatic experiences
Campos (2008), Portugal	70Portuguese Colonial War	Qualitative	OLHI	Narrative synthesis	• Veterans’ memory contains shame due to collective unappreciation, demand recognition • Reasons for fighting are not homogeneous • Respondents’ memory is largely aligned with the dominant public narrative
Coleman and Podolskij (2007), Russia	50WWII	Mixed-methods (quantitative assessment and qualitative interview)	OLHI	Frequency and percentage; content analysis	• 24% qualified for PTSD • 94% displayed moderate to high self-esteem • Relatively, the veterans were high in generativity • War experiences dominated their reminiscing, and many veterans told detailed stories about their experiences • Hegemonic dominance in the memories- many individuals maintained or recovered their Soviet identity • Cognitive pro-activeness and family support were key factors in regaining identity
Galmarini (2014), USA	Autobiographies of Soviet Blinded VeteransWWII	Qualitative	Autobiography	Content analysis	• The autobiographies reflected blind veterans’ strong sense of dignity and resiliency in the face of harsh adversity. They coped with changing circumstances by adopting labor
Dwyer (2011), Australia	50MemoirsThe Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars	Qualitative	Memoirs	Content analysis	• War was recalled more in a personal and experiential way • Most of them are formulaic, often consisting of an overall “grand narrative” • Generally, did not question the reason for war • Widespread in all memoirs is death and to a greater or lesser degree its concomitant, grief, and sorrow • Descriptions of death and suffering rarely dwelt on the consequences of the act of killing, and there is rarely an acknowledgment of having taken part in any atrocities described • War outcome often influences AM
Engelhard et al. (2008), Netherlands	214infantry troops of the Royal Netherlands ArmyOEF	Prospective longitudinal	Memory (traumatic) consistency	Correlation, regression	• Retrospective accounts of stressors were highly variable over time • Individuals with higher levels of PTSD symptoms and neuroticism, lower levels of extraversion, and fewer prior missions were more prone to increased reporting over time
Geraerts et al. (2007), Croatia	121(PTSD 88, other than PTSD 33)Croatian War	Cross-sectional analytic	AMT	Frequency (%), mean, SD, correlation, t test, sign test	• Amnesia and high-frequency intrusions were not particularly typical for traumatized individuals • Traumatic memories were not qualitatively different from neutral memories with respect to their stability and sensory qualities • The severity of PTSD symptoms was not significantly correlated with dissociative experiences
Krinsley et al. (2003), USA	76Vietnam War	Pre-post test	Memory (traumatic) consistency using a protocol (Krinsley et al., 2003)	Descriptive analysis, association	• Respondents are generally consistent in reporting traumatic events, although the majority report more events upon re-evaluation • Reporting about traumatic events shows some variation as a function of the life epoch in which events occurred, whether they were directly or indirectly experienced, and the type of trauma involved
Lomsky-Feder (2004), Israel	63Yom Kippur War	Qualitative interview	OLHI	Narrative synthesis	• Narratives of veterans reflect different “voices,” each of which has a different recollection of memories • Distinct cultural criteria determine personal memory • Strong hegemonic dominance is prevalent among the veterans recalling war memories • The remembering subject is not liberated to choose any interpretation he wishes rather guided by social-cultural criteria
Markwick (2008), Australia	MemoirsSoviet women veteransWWII	Qualitative	Memoirs	Content analysis	• Recall experiences that seem specifically female, particularly the human and social dimension of war • Sexual relations between male and female soldiers have been silenced in historical and private writing • Very little is written about the post-war life of women veterans
McNally et al. (1995), USA	32(PTSD 19, non-PTSD 13)	2 × 2 Factorial design with repeated measurement(2(Group: PTSD, Control) × 2(Cue Type: Negative, Positive))	AMT	2 × 2 ANOVA, t test	• Veterans with PTSD exhibited difficulties retrieving specific AMs, especially in response to positive trait cue words • Regalia-wearing PTSD subjects disproportionately retrieved memories from the Vietnam War, unlike other subjects who retrieved relatively recent memories
McNally et al. (1994), USA	82(PTSD 39Psychiatric 20Well-adjusted23)Vietnam War	3 × 2 × 3 Factorial design(3 (Group: PTSD, Psychiatric Control, Well-adjusted Control) × 2 (Prime: Combat, Neutral) × 3 (Cue Word: Negative, Positive, Neutral))	AMT	ANOVA, correlation	• PTSD patients experienced difficulty retrieving specific AMs, especially after having viewed the combat videotape
Moore (2011), UK	Memoirs, diaries, surveysWWII	Qualitative	Memoirs, diaries, surveys	Content analysis	• Veterans had established a “language community” with a particular way to speak about the war. It is difficult to communicate with post-war audiences with different language communities • Six categories of “memory writing” that veterans used to engage in memory debates: post-war diaries, “testimonial literature,” articles and literary works, surveys and oral histories, memoirs, and paratext
Moradi et al. (2012), Iran	75(PTSD 25, no PTSD 25, control 25)Iran–Iraq War	Cross-sectional analytic	AMT	Means and SDt testANOVAMANOVARegression	• PTSD group generated fewer specific episodic and semantic details of AM compared to the non-PTSD and control groups • Working memory did not significantly moderate the relationship between PTSD diagnosis and reduced AMs but did moderate the relationship between PTSD diagnosis and semantic recall • Semantic memory recall was not significantly related to working memory ability for those with PTSD but was related to working memory ability for trauma survivors without PTSD
Nets-Zehngut (2017), Israel	68Memoirs published between 1949 and 20045Authors of six relevant memoirs, and an additional two 1948 war veterans who did not publish memoirsArab–Israeli War (1948)	Archival analysisIn-depth interview	MemoirsAMI	Content analysis	• With time, the Israeli AM of the exodus has become more critical • Factors influencing veterans’ AM: Common knowledge, Psychological difficulties, Time/Getting old, Political motivation, the wish to present truth, Mistakes, Ideology
Nguyen (2013), Australia	4Veterans of the former Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF)Vietnam War	Qualitative interview	OLHI	Narrative synthesis	• A specific description of horror and trauma • Despite these experiences, their life stories demonstrate a core of resilience and a will to survive • One common emotion is a feeling of guilt
Parr (2007), New Zealand	3New Zealand VeteransWWII	Qualitative in-depth interview	OLHI	Narrative synthesis	• Reasons for being silent: perceptions of not being understood, shame, learned from family/father • Effect of disclosing AMs: One felt the adverse effect, reduced fear of open spaces, sense of relief, a positive relationship with family members
Robinson and Jobson (2013), UK	23Trauma survivors/military combat and war zone experiencesUnspecified war	Cross-sectional survey	AMT(Williams and Broadbent, 1986)	Mean, SDPaired t test, partial correlations	• When cognitive ability was partialled out, the relationship between avoidance (a PTSD symptom) and autobiographical memory specificity was significant Similar correlation was found for relieving symptom as well
Rubin et al. (2004), USA	50VeteransUnspecified war	Cross-sectional analytic	AMT	Means and standard errors, ANOVA	• Partial separation of cognitive judgments of re-experiencing an emotion and reports of visceral symptoms of the emotion • Visceral symptoms correlating more consistently with scores on PTSD tests • Reliving, but not fragmentation of the memories, increased with increases in the trauma relatedness of the event and with increases in PTSD severity
Southwick et al. (1997), USA	59National Guard reservistsGulf War	Prospective longitudinal	Memory consistency19 items Desert Storm Trauma Questionnaire (Southwick et al., 1993)	Paired t test, frequency and percentage, Pearson correlations	• 88% of subjects changed their responses on at least one of the 19 items, while 61% changed two or more items • Significant positive correlation between PTSD symptoms at 2 years and the number of responses to the trauma questionnaire changed from no at 1 month to yes at 2 years
Trott (2013), UK	Memoirs of Harry Patch and Henry AllinghamWWI	Qualitative	Autobiography	Content analysis	• Veteran testimonies reinforced many narratives of the WWI such as horror in the trench • Patch and Allingham’s memories also countered popular narratives in some areas such as the myth of futility and incompetence of generals
Walton (2010), USA	An unspecified number of veteransWWII(Okinawa (April–June 1945))	Qualitative interview	OLHI	Content analysis	• Reticent about recounting their memories. They often waited until late in life to do so • Memory quality: generally reliable and accurate, with few discrepancies and lack of specificity • Risk of contamination by Media (e.g. TV, films) and Repetition and rehearsal • Veterans could provide details about their initial experiences during a campaign • Recollections about their later experiences during the same the campaign were foggier
Wiest (2013), USA	28US veteransWWII	Qualitative interview	OLHI	Narrative synthesis	• Memories followed the narrative order • Lack of specificities, such as dates or names, or remembered events out of chronological order, was observed for a few cases • Common AM characteristics: description of routine event, downplaying extraordinary events, war self as situated self, stereotyping, defining esteem • Factors influencing recall: Culture, hegemony, current events, regalia or souvenirs, time and purpose of recall

AM: autobiographical memory; OLHI: oral life-history interview; AMI: autobiographical memory interview; PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder; AMT: autobiographical memory test; ANOVA: analysis of variance; MANOVA: multivariate analysis of variance; OEF/OIF: Operation Enduring/Iraqi Freedom; RVNAF: Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces.

Quality appraisal

One star (25%) was assigned to meeting each quality criterion. As such, the highest possible MMAT score was four stars (100%). In all, 54.5% of the quantitative papers and 37.5% of the qualitative papers met all quality criteria, scoring four stars. The lone mixed-methods study also obtained a four-star rating (see Supplementary Material 2). The remaining papers, except only one, had three-star ratings, revealing the high quality of the papers reviewed.

Identified themes

The examination of findings published in the reviewed articles resulted in five recurrent themes: (1) Features of veterans’ AM, (2) Content of veterans’ AM, (3) Self and memory, (4) Culture and memory, and (5) Theoretical accounts of veterans’ AM.

Theme 1: features of veterans’ AM

Inspection of oral as well as written memoirs revealed some recurrent features concerning the veterans’ AM. These features are described under four sub-themes.

Hegemonic dominance

Veterans’ AMs were often characterized by hegemonic dominance. Their memories tended to align with or show loyalty to the hegemonic narratives. For example, public memories of Portuguese hold the anti-war sentiment. Ex-combatants of the Portuguese Colonial War also echoed similar sentiment “[war] was an enormous waste of men, meant huge suffering for women, for families,” and, according to many, “was a war that could have been avoided” (Campos, 2008: 123). Often, extraordinary or critical events are described in a socially acceptable language, perhaps to avoid traumatic recollection (Wiest, 2013) or to align with hegemonic narratives. Take the example of an Israeli veteran remembering 1948 Arab–Israeli War, “I’m sure that there were massacres here and there, but they would have been the local initiative of a crazy commander” (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009: 1052). In addition, hegemonic dominance was also evident through the masculine manifestation of the narratives, which, in particular, did not raise any question on the justification of the war per se (Dwyer, 2011).

Descriptions of routine events

Apart from the description of horrific and traumatic incidents, for the most part, the veterans’ memories were filled with a description of daily routine events. Six studies specifically mentioned such memories (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009; Bonnin, 2016; Briggs, 2016; Dwyer, 2011; Nguyen, 2013; Wiest, 2013). Instead of the war itself, veterans clearly remembered routine activities: as Bonnin (2016) point out, Malvinas War veterans “remember the alarm more than the actual attacks” (195). As for the American Second World War (WWII) veterans, most of the narratives depicted a thorough description of everyday occurrences despite few mentions of horror experiences (Wiest, 2013). The similar phenomenon was echoed in the description of South Vietnamese veteran (Nguyen, 2013). The regular descriptions of daily happenings even incorporated social relationships that were particularly meaningful to the remembering subject (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009).

Memory as the story

The veterans’ memories, examined through oral history interviews and memoirs, tended to follow the structure of a story, starting with a time they joined in military followed by war experiences in chronological order to the termination of the job (Burnell et al., 2009; Dwyer, 2011; Walton, 2010; Wiest, 2013). They often narrated their stories in a way that connects listeners. For example, the use of funny anecdotes and culturally familiar stories (Wiest, 2013), body languages, facials and gestures, silences (Lomsky-Feder, 2004) attracted the listeners.

Testimonial character

Since war is central to veterans’ memories, plenty of them qualifies as testimonies of historical events. For instance, from the memory of a woman veteran, we can observe strong assertiveness in retaining her dignity in the face of an unethical order of spending an evening with “generals”: “I won’t carry out this order. You will have to shoot me!” (Markwick, 2008: 418). The significance of any war-associated description of brutality and horror can often be cross-validated with the veterans’ memories (Trott, 2013). Despite the potential influence of psychosocial covariates in the construction of veterans’ memories, description of horror, massacre, and atrocities essentially testified the extent of adverse war context (Bonnin, 2016; Lomsky-Feder, 2004; Markwick, 2008; Moore, 2011; Nguyen, 2013). Likewise, some voiced against irregularities and associated sufferings that happened within the combat (Bonnin, 2016). The testimonial character of veterans’ AMs could struggle to gain equal treatment if they were incompatible with hegemonic narratives.

Theme 2: content of veterans’ AM

Memory specificity

Six quantitative studies (Brown et al., 2013; McNally et al., 1994, 1995; Moradi et al., 2012; Robinson and Jobson, 2013; Rubin et al., 2004) focused on memory specificity using standard AMT. A regular observation is that veterans with a clinical condition, mostly with PTSD, lacked memory specificity when compared with the healthy controls. One qualitative study, using oral history interview, revealed the WWII (Okinawa) veterans’ memories to be incomplete, inconsistent, and with gaps in a certain period (Walton, 2010). The memories recalled from the latter part of the war span were relatively more detailed and specific than the earlier part—showing a recency effect. Two studies, however, showed that veterans recalled very specific memories and provided details in their autobiographical interviews (Nguyen, 2013; Wiest, 2013). Examination of memoirs has revealed mixed evidence with some providing very specific memories (Markwick, 2008), while others are showing merely fragmentary construction or overgeneral memories (Briggs, 2016).

Horror and atrocity

Memories of massacres and atrocities were quite common among war veterans. Both in oral accounts and published writings, numerous depictions of death and dead bodies were noted (Briggs, 2016; Dwyer, 2011; Markwick, 2008; Nguyen, 2013). Veterans still visualize losing their frontline combat friends (Markwick, 2008) or killing others indiscriminately, particularly women (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009) or newborn babies (Moore, 2011). Veterans predominantly recalled incidents that were tied to their injury or trauma (Nguyen, 2013).

Memory consistency

Three quantitative studies tested the memory consistency ranging from Dutch soldiers deployed to Iraq (Engelhard et al., 2008), veterans of Operation Desert Storm (Southwick et al., 1997) to some unspecified war veterans (Krinsley et al., 2003). In general, retrospective accounts of traumatic memories were highly variable over time. For instance, using a 19-item trauma questionnaire, Southwick et al. (1997) found 88% of the participants changed their responses on at least one of the items, while 61% changed two or more times in a reassessment at 2 years. This inconsistency was positively linked with scores on a standardized PTSD test. Another study revealed veterans to report more traumatic events during reassessment, but a general consistency was maintained in memory descriptions (Krinsley et al., 2003). There is, however, a lack of sufficient information about the consistency of the non-traumatic AMs.

Theme 3: self and memory

AMs are self-descriptive memories (Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000), influenced by various factors. The third dominant theme that emerged from the review is linked with how individual and self-related factors shape veterans’ memories. Evidence from 23 studies led us to form seven sub-themes, as described below.

Clinical condition

Almost all quantitative studies indicated that the presence of any clinical condition affected the specificity of veterans’ AM. Veterans showing symptoms of PTSD (Brown et al., 2013, 2014; Engelhard et al., 2008; Geraerts et al., 2007; McNally et al., 1994, 1995; Moradi et al., 2012; Robinson and Jobson, 2013; Rubin et al., 2004; Southwick et al., 1997), depression (Brown et al., 2013, 2014), anxiety (McNally et al., 1994, 1995; Moradi et al., 2012), and personality disorders (Engelhard et al., 2008) recalled less specific AMs. The mediating role of several behavioral factors, such as alcoholism (McNally et al., 1994, 1995), combat experience (Brown et al., 2013, 2014; McNally et al., 1994, 1995), general cognitive ability (McNally et al., 1994, 1995; Robinson and Jobson, 2013), and executive function (Brown et al., 2013, 2014), in the relationship between clinical conditions and memory specificity was also examined. At a deeper level, one study found a significant relationship between memory specificity and the reliving and avoidance symptoms of PTSD but not with the hyperarousal symptom of PTSD (Robinson and Jobson, 2013). Reliving also appeared as a significant feature of traumatic memories of veterans diagnosed with PTSD (Rubin et al., 2004).

Apart from reduced specificity, veterans tended to amplify or over-report traumatic events with increased PTSD symptoms (Southwick et al., 1997), neuroticism, and decreased extraversion (Engelhard et al., 2008). With regard to the components of AM, veterans with PTSD generated fewer internal/episodic details than veterans without PTSD did (Brown et al., 2014; Moradi et al., 2012).

Reluctance to recall

Veterans exhibited notable reluctance in recounting memories covering almost all wars and times. The last surviving British veteran of the WWI, called Harry Patch, for instance, expressed his reluctance,

I didn’t meet any old comrades from the regiment after the war and I made a point not to watch war films. Anything to do with the war on television, and I turned it off straight away . . . I didn’t even like the old wartime songs, because they brought back too many memories . . .” (Briggs, 2016: 92)

Unlike Harry, WWII veterans often felt not understood (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009; Moore, 2011; Parr, 2007) or that their stories were deemed less important by the following generation (Walton, 2010; Wiest, 2013), and therefore remained silent. Others found it hard to convey their stories to their children as the children themselves were engaged in another war, or they possessed anti-war sentiment (Walton, 2010). For the expatriate South Vietnamese veterans (Nguyen, 2013), unappreciated Portuguese Colonial War veterans (Campos, 2008), and canonical Israeli veterans (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009), sharing memory was considered as socially unacceptable and shameful. However, reminiscing about war memories just upon finishing the war had a positive impact on psychological health and family life for the WWII veterans (Parr, 2007).

Political ideology

Veterans belonging to a certain political party or adhering to a specific ideology often recall in a way that does not conflict with their political or ideological stance. This phenomenon has been observed in at least seven studies (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009; Campos, 2008; Coleman and Podolskij, 2007; Dwyer, 2011; Galmarini, 2014; Nets-Zehngut, 2017; Nguyen, 2013). The impact of Communist ideology is evident in the memories of Soviet veterans. Studying all the published memoirs of Israeli war veterans from 1949 to 2004, Nets-Zehngut (2017) observed that

Some war veterans, especially leading into the 1970s, were highly influenced by the Zionist ideology and thus were very biased in their approach toward the conflict, including the exodus. Therefore, they were inclined to see Israel as just and moral in its conduct, blind to the Critical narrative of the exodus. (p. 190)

The same study observed some veterans’ political motivation to support Israel facilitates them to write memoirs align to Israeli hegemonic narratives.

Defining esteem

In at least seven studies, it was observed that veterans’ AMs defined their esteem, and often boosted their positive self-esteem. Heroism was central to almost all memoirs of the nineteenth-century French veterans (Dwyer, 2011), Soviet (Markwick, 2008), and the American WWII veterans. The pride associated with winning a war or a positive reception after the war was linked with veterans recalling memories reflecting higher self-esteem. For instance, consider a diary entry of a Guomindang (GMD) officer after Japan surrendered to WWII allied forces,

Today we celebrate victory in the War of Resistance, the revitalisation of our people and our nation, and world peace. China started fighting this World War, and China finished it. . . . . . . . . . . . . in order to raise the status of our nation, finally winning their glorious victory. (Moore, 2011: 403)

Veterans also felt good by recalling their memories of being a member of elite forces (Nguyen, 2013).

However, the outcome of the war or post-war experience often downplayed veterans’ esteem. For instance, a general tendency to portray themselves as the victim is seen in the narratives of American veterans who fought in the Vietnam War (Wiest, 2013). Similarly, Soviet WWII veterans’ post-war memories (i.e. after the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—USSR) comprised hopelessness, sense of deprivation, and betrayal as mentioned by a Ukrainian male veteran from Cherkassy “It hurts to look at the old men who gave all their strengths to the state and now drag out a miserable existence . . . We the veterans are betrayed. We have been deprived of our past” (Coleman and Podolskij, 2007: 56).

Generational identity

Veterans’ AM was also different according to their generational identity, age, and sociopolitical conditions. For example, the canonical generation of Israel (1948 veterans) tended to express uniform voice, often adhering to hegemonic censorship than the non-canonical generation (1973 Yum Kippur veterans). The latter showed “more degrees of freedom to voice individual memories and a critical outlook” (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009: 1048). This was also resonated in the voices of Soviet WWII veterans, “I hardly survived the breaking of the USSR. I can’t forget the behavior of our party leaders. It’s impossible for me to feel the present is equal to the past. Only our spirits and beliefs are the same” (Coleman and Podolskij, 2007: 56).

Besides generational identity, with age, veterans felt a sense of urgency to express their life stories, often overcoming the so-called hegemonic censorship. As observed in Israeli veterans’ memory of Israel–Palestine 1948 war, some veterans decided to write their memoirs because they felt compelled to tell their life experiences, as they aged (Nets-Zehngut, 2017).

Psychological suffering

While veterans’ AMs generally protect their sense of self, there is ample evidence of them breaking down due to the enormous psychological suffering the war created in them. There was a consistent internal conflict between their combat and veteran selves, especially when the futility of the war becomes apparent or when they see their war comrades are dying due to lack of medical care or poverty (Dwyer, 2011). This psychic conflict often manifested as anger, resentment, and guilt, which were recurrently featured in veterans’ memories. Part of these feelings arose from the malpractice that happened within their battalion. Particularly, when there is a huge deviation from what is told to others and what is actually happening in the combat. A veteran of Arab–Israeli War (1973), for instance, expressed his disgust,

[There were] myths that you don’t leave the wounded, you don’t leave them in the battlefield . . . all that disappears . . . when you see how they abandon the wounded, how they leave bodies behind, how . . . hysterical officers . . . are not in control of things, how soldiers don’t believe their officers, how soldiers evade their duties so they don’t get wounded . . . (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009: 1057)

Anger and complaints of malpractice to senior officials and politicians were also apparent in the memories of unrecognized Malvinas (Bonnin, 2016) and Portuguese Colonial War veterans (Campos, 2008). Remembering veterans themselves often committed massacre and atrocities. Some of them confess those horrific actions such as killing an innocent woman for no reason (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009) or sacrificing a newborn baby to save others (Moore, 2011). These confessions partly explain why many of the veterans suffer from guilt (Campos, 2008) and loneliness (Coleman and Podolskij, 2007) and eventually commit suicide (Dwyer, 2011).

Description of situated self

The memories of veterans reflected one critical issue that established two “selves.” That is, their “soldier self” and “veteran self” appear as two distinct psychological identities (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009; Lomsky-Feder, 2004; Wiest, 2013). Many behaviors such as drinking, smoking, swearing, or even killing people were perceived to be normal in the war context. However, now as veterans, they are perceived as maladaptive. This could be another reason why most veterans remain silent about their war memories, especially in the early stage of war termination, perhaps taking time to transform from “combatant self” to “veteran self.”

Theme 4: culture and memory

The fourth theme that emerged from the literature is concerned with the larger sociocultural factors that operate in conjunction with individual factors in constructing veterans’ AM. Five sub-themes are generated to explain this theme.

Dominant public narratives

Veterans’ AMs were found to be shaped by dominant narratives, social pressure, or even their commitment to adhere to social order. Soviet WWII women veterans, for instance, remained silent in their memoirs about the controversial themes such as sexual relations with peers or seniors in the combat. They instead focused more on post-war family life to keep themselves free from social pressure (Markwick, 2008). Galmarini (2014) observed “flourishing of new interpretations of the war” in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev (1953–1964) and Brezhnev (1964–1982) regimes than in the former Stalin (1924–1953) regime, who was alleged to silence any negative aspect of war. Painful or memories incompatible with dominant narratives are deemed “unsafe” and often re-composed to conform with the public norms (Briggs, 2016).

Furthermore, while narrating their stories, US WWII veterans showed a keen awareness of a dominant war narrative. They framed their narratives in relation to their understanding of what a war story “should be” and evaluated their own and others’ narratives according to that awareness (Wiest, 2013). The canonical generation of Israel also showed a strong commitment to social order in their memories (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009). Despite depicting a mixture of horror and sexuality, there were boundaries of not breaching social convention (Dwyer, 2011).

Nature of the event

Whether an event would be remembered or forgotten largely depended on the nature of the event. Veterans recurrently mentioned their inability to forget horrific events with intense emotion. For example, consider the confession of an Israeli veteran,

During the war, we went through the central, northern and southern fronts. I can’t remember [a similar instance], apart from that terrible time at Kirin, when one of us killed an Arab woman, for no reason other than to kill her, which is terrible, and I’ll never be able to forget it, yes. (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009: 1052)

The South Vietnamese veteran also indicated how the horror and atrocity get embedded in memory, which frequently manifests as flashbacks and terrifying dreams. In his words, “It [horror in the war] is ingrained in my head and I could never forget it” (Nguyen, 2013: 710).

Clearly, from their memory descriptions, these veterans showed PTSD symptoms, although they were not formally assessed. This assessment was needed because, in a lab-based study, veterans with PTSD were found to incorporate more content associated with war when recalling the past or imaging future (Brown et al., 2013).

Myths or popular narratives

Cultural assumptions or mythology influenced the construction of veterans’ AM. First, the cultural interpretation of what it meant to be a soldier in Israeli or American society often determined what he or she remembered. According to veterans interviewed in Lomsky-Feder (2004), “coming to terms with the war implies not only proper behavior during battle but also not having been affected by battle at war’s end” (p. 97), indicating a hidden cultural process in encoding and recalling AMs. War stories in American culture often come up with a leading “hero,” a fact that resonated in the autobiographical interviews with the WWII veterans (Wiest, 2013).

Second, popular narratives or mythologies have also been found to color veterans’ AM. In Britain, three such mythologies existed regarding WWI: the horror of the trenches, the incompetence of generals, and the futility of the conflict. Trott (2013) examined the autobiographies of Harry Patch and Henry Allingham, two of the last surviving WWI veterans in Britain and noticed some mythologies such as adverse experiences in trenches, but not horror in the combat were echoed in the memoirs of the veterans. Furthermore, both veterans resisted popular myths about incompetent generals and futility of the war.

Social support

Veterans’ current state of life often determined the specificity of their recollection. Post-war social support helped many veterans to reconcile with the traumatic memories, which in turn facilitated retrieval. For instance, the coherent description in the AMs was observed among British WWII veterans who experienced positive family and societal support in their post-war life (Burnell et al., 2009). In another condition, despite losing in a war, South Vietnamese veterans recalled vivid memories once they were settled in life with adequate social support (Nguyen, 2013). It was also revealed that current events, conflicts, or worries often ignite veterans to speak out their memories. For example, the Iraq War in 2004 compelled many US WWII veterans to share their experiences (Wiest, 2013).

War outcome

The outcome of war tended to color the veterans’ memories. It was particularly evident in the memories of veterans who were on the defeated side. For instance, upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, most of the veterans recalled worries, hopelessness, and a sense of betrayal. It was “very hard” for them to accept the changing circumstances (Coleman and Podolskij, 2007). This was also echoed in the voices of South Vietnamese veterans (Nguyen, 2013) and Portuguese Colonial War veterans (Campos, 2008), both groups belonged to either the defeated side or their contribution was not appreciated in the public memory. Drawing a link between Portuguese Colonial War and post-war public reception in Portugal, Campos (2008) mentioned, “the shame reached such an extent that after 1974 the colonial war was cautiously swept away from the collective memory” (p. 116). That is, there is a sharp variation AMs of veterans belong to the winning side and defeated side.

Theme 5: theoretical accounts

The current review illustrates that different theoretical accounts have been used to explain different features of veterans’ AM. Qualitative studies, for instance, interpreted memories as a narrative development process, meaning veterans’ memories, particularly the traumatic ones, are constantly in the process of meaning-making (Briggs, 2016; Burnell et al., 2009; Nets-Zehngut, 2017; Parr, 2007). This could lead to different mental health outcomes depending on the success of the meaning-making process. Erikson’s identity theory (Erikson Erik, 1950) has been used to explain how personal identity in conjunction with social identity helps to construct and organize individual memory for veterans with the diverse sociodemographic background (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009; Bonnin, 2016; Coleman and Podolskij, 2007; Markwick, 2008). Construct like generational identity is found to stand between personal and social identity to shape veterans’ AMs (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009). Several studies, however, considered veterans’ AM as merely a social and cultural product, emphasizing more on the societal factors like myths or popular narratives concerning the respective war, which influenced personal memories (Campos, 2008; Dwyer, 2011; Lomsky-Feder, 2004; Trott, 2013; Wiest, 2013).

The quantitative studies have also used different models to explain certain memory attributes. For example, the issue of overgeneral AM has been dealt with the Car-Fa-X model proposed by Williams et al. (2007). Three mechanisms, which are Capture and Rumination (CaR), Functional Avoidance (FA), and Impaired Executive Control (X), have been attributed to the overgeneral recall of AMs by veterans suffering from PTSD and other mental disorders (Brown et al., 2013, 2014; Engelhard et al., 2008; Geraerts et al., 2007; Robinson and Jobson, 2013). According to the functional avoidance hypothesis, veterans retrieve overgeneral memories as a method of avoiding negative affect. Capture and rumination is the tendency to amplify events and thoughts related to trauma. As they engage most of their cognitive resources in ruminating on traumatic life experiences, they have little resources left to construct a detailed and specific AM. Finally, an impaired executive control, likely to be present among many veterans suffering from mental health issues, can truncate their effort to construct a specific AM, thus resulting in an overgeneral memory recollection.

The SMS framework (Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2000) has also been used to explain overgeneral AMs. According to this model, AM is represented hierarchically with the general summaries of broad categories of lifetime periods at the top and increasingly specific details of individual events at the bottom, and overgeneral memory results from the truncated search operated within the autobiographical knowledge structure (Moradi et al., 2012; Robinson and Jobson, 2013). The review identified seven papers, which did not mention any specific theoretical accounts in explaining their findings (Galmarini, 2014; Krinsley et al., 2003; McNally et al., 1994; Nguyen, 2013; Rubin et al., 2004; Southwick et al., 1997; Walton, 2010).

Discussion

This mixed-studies systematic review synthesized findings from 28 articles examining AMs of war veterans recruited from different parts of the world. The papers were published in various journals in psychology, anthropology, sociology, and oral history. The studies used diverse methods to accumulate veterans’ memories for events that occurred at the battlefield as well as in their normal daily life, including oral history interviews, AM interviews, AM test, autobiographies, memoirs, and diaries. In this discussion, we use the findings of the review to reflect on the five aims we outlined at the outset.

Our first aim was to understand what the main characteristics of veterans’ AM are. Quantitative studies revealed that veterans with clinical conditions lacked memory specificity (Brown et al., 2013, 2014; McNally et al., 1994, 1995; Moradi et al., 2012). Veterans also frequently recalled memories associated with horror and atrocities (Briggs, 2016; Dwyer, 2011; Moore, 2011; Nguyen, 2013). Their overgeneral recollections were mainly due to the dominance of traumatic events that they experienced in the combat because remembering of those events was distressing—something they wanted to avoid—termed as functional avoidance (Sumner, 2012; Williams et al., 2007). Healthy veterans, especially the ones who received heroic public receptions after the war, recalled memories with good coherence and detail as compared to the ones who did not have a similar post-war experience (Bonnin, 2016; Burnell et al., 2009; Campos, 2008). A voice reflecting hegemonic narratives dominated veterans’ AM, although they passionately delineated daily routine events offsetting horror and atrocity.

The second aim of the review was to determine whether PTSD and other mental disorders in veterans resulted in less specific and less coherent AMs. This was indeed found to be the case—quite consistent with the mainstream literature suggesting a strong relationship between PTSD and overgeneral memory (Brown et al., 2013, 2014; McNally et al., 1994, 1995). We also observed that the specificity of veterans’ memory improved with the improvement of their PTSD symptoms severity following therapeutic interventions (Burnell et al., 2009). The veterans who received constant social and family support were able to reconcile with the traumatic war memories and showed a tendency to recall AMs in a more coherent manner (Burnell et al., 2009; Nguyen, 2013).

Our third aim was to discover whether the recollections of veterans’ memories influenced by their split identity—a combatant identity versus a veteran identity. A common tendency was to remain reluctant to share memories due to lack of social acceptance and willing listeners, and adverse post-war atmosphere. This kind of tendency continued for years after the war ended (Campos, 2008; Lomsky-Feder, 2004). Inability to disclose their memories, often full of trauma and brutality, is the reason for many veterans suffering from PTSD and other mental disorders (Parr, 2007). There were ample instances where they mentioned that it was difficult to cope with remembering traumatic warfare and horrific actions (Campos, 2008; Nguyen, 2013). They often ended up with the feeling of guilt, shame, and loneliness. However, there were also incidences in which memories delineated positive esteem, especially in those who were on the winning side of the combat (Moore, 2011). Nonetheless, many veterans used a cognitive strategy to cope with the traumatic wartime memories—they have separated their veteran self from combatant self; what was done as a combatant was not relevant for a veteran and did not represent him (Lomsky-Feder, 2004).

In relation to our fourth aim, the larger sociopolitical environment was found to influence the veterans’ AM. The dominant public narratives colored their memory recollections. Public narratives act like a socially shared schema (Wertsch, 2008), which influences AM. In other words, members of a community narrate their personal histories through the lens of a schematic narrative template available for that community. For veterans, such templates were reflected in their collective memory, popular narratives, and myths (Trott, 2013). The outcome of war also played a significant role in veterans’ memory recollection. If the outcome was positive, meaning if the fellow citizens offered them a spontaneous reception, media projected them as a national hero, and the respective Governments offered them various honorarium and regalia, their memories were more detailed and coherent (Nguyen, 2013). The role of social-cultural factors in veterans’ AM is in line with the social-cultural developmental theory of AM (Nelson and Fivush, 2004).

Our fifth aim asked how the results presented in the reviewed articles were explained. The findings that veterans with various mental health conditions recalled more overgeneral memories were explained by the Car-Fa-X model (Williams et al., 2007). According to this model, overgeneral memories are the result of Capture and Rumination (CaR), Functional Avoidance (FA), and Impaired Executive Control (X). SMS framework has also been used to explain overgeneral memory. According to this framework, the working self of the rememberer actively operates to set the retrieval goal while recalling an AM. In a cued recall paradigm, the cues are elaborated in the form of mental imagery, which is then used to access the hierarchically organized autobiographical knowledge structure. At the top of the hierarchy, there exists highly abstract lifetime period knowledge, in the middle less abstract general event knowledge, and at the bottom the most specific event memories (Haque and Conway, 2001). When the rememberer suffers from a specific mental disorder, she or he finds it difficult to access and travel through the knowledge structure due to their impaired working memory capacity. Their effort to construct a full memory is truncated, thus the retrieval of overgeneral AM.

Qualitative studies, however, interpreted veterans’ memories as a narrative development and meaning-making process. By recalling personal life experiences, especially the traumatic ones, veterans go through a meaning-making process that eventually defines who they are. Erickson’s identity theory has been used to explain how personal and social identity together influences the recollection of personal life experiences (Ben-Ze’ev and Lomsky-Feder, 2009; Bonnin, 2016; Coleman and Podolskij, 2007; Markwick, 2008). Several studies have also delineated that veterans’ AMs are the social and cultural product; they are shaped by the myths and popular narratives concerning the war they fought as well as the ongoing sociopolitical circumstances (Dwyer, 2011; Lomsky-Feder, 2004; Trott, 2013; Wiest, 2013). Ironically, almost one-third of the reviewed studies did not utilize any theoretical accounts to explain their findings.

The revised SMS framework (Conway and Jobson, 2012) could also be utilized to explain the cultural impact of memory construction among war veterans. According to this framework, the recall of AM is guided by the working self, which sets the retrieval goals, in conjunction with the conceptual self of the remembering individual. It is evident that veterans’ AMs are influenced by their political ideology, mental health condition, and personal as well as generational identity. Setting retrieval goals and sub-goals is heavily influenced by these identity-related factors. The interplay between their combatant self and veteran self is another obvious reality that influences their remembering. The conceptual self, as highlighted in the SMS framework, appears to be a dominant factor in forming veterans’ AM. The broader sociopolitical environment, dominant narratives in the society, myths, and societal responses to the war outcome that formed the veterans’ conceptual self influenced their memory recollection. For example, if the dominant public narrative is “one million people from their side were killed, and 100 thousand women were raped during the war,” veterans would be more likely to construct their memories aligning with this narrative (Trott, 2013), meaning frequent mention of killing and rape in their narratives.

Veterans’ AMs result from a complex interaction between their identity, cultural factors, and autobiographical knowledge base. Compared to the memory of a normal individual, a veteran memory is more likely to be influenced by the cultural factors, which include political atmosphere, dominant public narratives, and war-related myths. This is because of the very nature of veteran memories that have both political and ideological connotations and often involve horror and destruction. In an adverse political environment, the veteran memories are more likely to be repressed. Even if they are remembered, they are aligned with political expectations and therefore significantly amended. A bidirectional relationship between memory and culture is present, as suggested by the SMS framework. While cultural components, such as dominant public narratives or myths influence how the veterans’ memories are delineated, the memories of veterans, in reciprocity, help shapes the public narratives (Conway and Jobson, 2012).

As war veterans hold two distinct types of memories, war memories and normal everyday memories, we suggest that the underlying cognitive processes of those recollections are somewhat different. The conceptual self, which is the product of a culture, plays a stronger role in the formation of war memories compared to the normal everyday memories. We also assume that the personality and political allegiance of the remembering veteran is a significant factor. If the veteran is highly politically motivated and outspoken, they will narrate war experiences without being influenced by the ongoing cultural expectations and political adversities.

To sum up, the multidisciplinary nature of this review is its strength. Synthesizing findings from various disciplines widens our understanding of veterans’ AM, especially the cultural factors influencing their remembering and forgetting. As this review covers memories of almost all wars taking place across the world, it helped us to gain a broader perspective of veterans’ memories. However, the heterogeneity of research included in this review posed a significant challenge as the diversity of research designs used in different studies made it difficult to compare findings across studies. While some studies attempted to investigate the content and construction of veterans’ AM, others examined memories for other purposes. For example, some studies examined memories to understand veterans’ coping strategies with traumatic memories (Burnell et al., 2009) and recovering their identity (Coleman and Podolskij, 2007), whereas others investigated how the discourse of class struggle was exposed in the memories of war veterans (Galmarini, 2014). Finally, despite having a robust association between PTSD and overgeneral and inconsistent memory, the researchers in most qualitative studies did not examine participants’ trauma level to corroborate memories.

Conclusion

This systematic review revealed that war veterans suffering from PTSD and other mental disorders recall less specific and less coherent AMs. However, their memory specificity and coherence could be improved by enhancing their mental health conditions through therapeutic interventions and other kinds of social support. A tendency was observed that veterans preferred not to disclose their memories perhaps because those often contained destructions and elements of atrocities and horror. This kind of repression has been suggested to be the reason for their developing mental disorders. Censorship on memories has been reflected in their split identity—a combatant identity versus a veteran identity. A veteran identity is preferred after the war as it keeps the individual isolated from the happenings at the battlefield. As the remembering of many war memories is quite unpleasant and traumatic, veterans were likely to incapacitate their combatant identity by not remembering those events.

Besides personal health and identity, several cultural factors appear to influence the recall of veterans’ AMs. Since every war has ideological connotations, such as freedom, patriotism, or justice, winning or losing a battle would surely have intense emotional consequences. The outcome of the war has a profound impact on whether the memories would be recalled with sufficient detail. If the veterans were given heroic receptions following winning a battle, their self-image and sense of achievement would ascend, resulting in the processing of memories more positively. The dominant social narratives and myths also shaped the recall of veterans’ memories.

Supplemental Material

Supplementary_material_1 – Supplemental material for Autobiographical memory of war veterans: A mixed-studies systematic review

Supplemental material, Supplementary_material_1 for Autobiographical memory of war veterans: A mixed-studies systematic review by Azharul Islam, Elizabeth Sheppard, Martin A Conway and Shamsul Haque in Memory Studies

Supplemental Material

Supplementary_material_2 – Supplemental material for Autobiographical memory of war veterans: A mixed-studies systematic review

Supplemental material, Supplementary_material_2 for Autobiographical memory of war veterans: A mixed-studies systematic review by Azharul Islam, Elizabeth Sheppard, Martin A Conway and Shamsul Haque in Memory Studies

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: A.I. is supported by a Higher Degree by Research Scholarship from Monash University Malaysia.

ORCID iD

Shamsul Haque

Supplemental material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Author biographies

Azharul Islam is an assistant professor of educational and counseling psychology at the University of Dhaka. He is currently doing research for PhD at Monash University Malaysia. He has an MPhil degree in counseling psychology from the University of Dhaka and a Master degree in health psychology from the University of Westminster, London. He has published in refereed journals and written books on psychological well-being. He has research interest in autobiographical memory and mental health.

Elizabeth Sheppard is an assistant professor at the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham, UK. She has a wide range of research interests relating to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), visual perception, and cognitive processes involved in driving, including perceptual, attentional, and decision-making processes, and published extensively in these areas.

Martin A Conway is the director at the Centre for Memory and Law of the City, University of London. Prior to the current position, he worked in various positions at the University of Leeds, the University of Durham, and the University of Bristol. He has researched human memory for over 32 years and has published numerous papers, books, and other articles, as well as making media contributions to television, radio, and newspapers and giving many public addresses. He takes the public communication of science very seriously and in recent years has given expert advice in the courts, to law societies, to insurance companies, and medical practitioners.

Shamsul Haque is an associate professor and head of the Department of Psychology at the Jeffrey Cheah School of Medicine and Health Sciences, Monash University Malaysia. He is a cognitive psychologist with extensive teaching and research experience. He has published his works in various local and international peer-reviewed journals and edited books. His research focuses on autobiographical memory, with particular reference to false memory, memory construction in psychiatric patients, cultural influences in memory, and the neuropsychology of autobiographical memory.

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