Abstract

The article presents the results of a study on the transgenerational transmission of psychosocial trauma in the third generation of victims of the Chilean military dictatorship. The participants were 14 young people, grandchildren of former political prisoners, aged 21.4 on average, living in the Metropolitan and Araucania regions. They were asked to use life stories to share their experiences as grandchildren of victims of political imprisonment. The results reveal a narrative process, which, beginning at certain stages, articulates the life stories of grandchildren framing it in a logic of transmission and transgenerational appropriation of the psychosocial trauma associated with the family's history and memory about the traumatic experience. Families remain engaged in a dynamic of avoidance and silence regarding the experience of torture, which determines the characteristics of the relationship of grandchildren with this traumatic experience.