memory argument, which is the view that we remember traumatic events differently, and often worse, than other kinds of events. The underlying assumption behind this argument is that the high emotional impact of traumatic situations overrides our other processing abilities. Proponents of this viewpoint would argue, for example, that a soldier in a war zone may be so severely shell-shocked that they have trouble encoding or recalling a coherent memory of a battle. We can actually trace this idea all the way back to Aristotle: ‘Memory does not occur in those who are in a rapid state of
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