This paper discusses contemporary approaches to the study of history, and their relation to the `history of ideas' which underpins traditional historiographies. After outlining the conventional histories of psychology, and their implicit assumptions, an alternative `history of the present' is discussed. The implications of utilizing a `history of the present', or archaeological approach to history, are discussed in relation to the `discourse debates' currently circumscribing critical psychological inquiry. An empirical example from my work in relation to an archaeology of hallucinations is used to illustrate these issues, in which I argue that the adoption of a `history of the present' avoids the dilemmas surrounding discursive approaches to the relation between language and social reality, and emphasizes the relevance of placing history on the agenda, when analysing the constitution of contemporary psychological phenomena. The paper raises these important issues and offers some conceptual tools for such an analysis.
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