Abstract

SENDAS, Sandra; MAIA, Ângela da Costa  and  FERNANDES, Eugénia. Entre o horror, a missão e a epopeia: Modalidades de atribuição de significado à participação na Guerra Colonial Portuguesa pelos seus ex-combatentes. Aná. Psicológica [online]. 2008, vol.26, n.4, pp.601-613. ISSN 0870-8231.

This study had the objective of exploring the meanings the veterans have atributed to war. A total of 314 (87.7%) subjects of a sample of 350 Portuguese colonial war veterans (M=57.3, SD=3.69; 68.3% with 4 year education) answer to the question: What does it mean in your life to have participated in a war. The qualitative analysis of the answers, acording to the grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) brought two concepts to light; revelation and war spoils, showing that the traumatic significance of the war experience is not one, and war can also mean the fulfillment of a duty or the aquisition of benefits at emotional, intelectual and ethic maturity. Our results are consonant with Aldwin, Levenson, and Spiro III (1994) and with Fontana and Rosenhek (1998) because those authors had found that the war experience can result for veterans both in positive and negative outcomes.

Keywords : Meaning attribution; Posttraumatic growth; Qualitative investigation; Traumatic stress.

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