We are publishing this set of commentaries on Janice Haaken's Pillar of Salt: Gender, Memory, and the Perils of Looking Back, along with the author's response, at an interesting historical moment. Our publication will coincide with the appearance of several new works on hysteria—one of Haaken's major concerns. Each in its own distinct way argues for a refreshed look at that category as a psychoanalytic concept, as a regulatory practice, as a produced effect on social/medical forces. Haaken notes in her response to her interlocutors that the book was planned in an extreme and polarized environment, marked by the reappearance or reprivileging of sexual abuse as a clinical, psychiatric syndrome. It was published in 1998, yet another distinct time frame, when different issues had become ascendent. But perhaps this is the point. Or at least one point to make here. The issues engaged in the book and in these commentaries and response flash up and reappear throughout the past century. There may have been periods of relative calm and reflective space, but the key issues have never gone away: