"Tense Past" provides a much needed appraisal and contextualization of the upsurge of interest in questions of memory and trauma evident in multiple personality and post-traumatic stress disorders, child abuse, and commemoration of the Holocaust. Contributors examine the historical origins of memory in psychiatric discourse and show its connection to broader developments in Western science and medicine. They address the new links between trauma and memory, and they explore how memory shapes the way traumatic events are put into narrative form. They also consider the social and political contexts in which sufferers speak and remember. Contributors include renowned scholars from several displines, including anthropologist Maurice Bloch and philosopher Ian Hacking; they represent the perspectives of diverse fields including medical anthropology, history of science, psychiatry, feminist studies, and Jewish studies.