This article traces the changing form and content of histories taken from patients in South African psychiatric settings over a period of a century, and analyses ways in which current history-taking practice continues to be moulded by discursive practices which have their origin in mid-19th century British psychiatry. It examines the implications of clinicians being record-keepers of their own clinical activities, and comments on ways in which patient identities are constructed by records produced through history-taking activities. The postmodern perspective usefully interrogates the assumption of a linear and unambiguous relationship between past events and present distress, and offers an opportunity for clinicians to understand patients' life stories as rich and ambiguous discourses through which relationships to both past and future are constantly in the process of negotiation.
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