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This article examines traditional approaches to occupational health, highlighting both their characteristics, their contributions and their limitations, and goes on to show how the “systemic school of Palo Alto” could be relevant. Its originality is to favor a systemic approach, which focuses on the interactions that are at stake between a suffering individual and his professional environment. Through two case studies, one at the hospital, the other in a large agri-food retailer, we present the operating mode of this approach. The following discussion allows an increase of generalization and specifies the conditions under which the systemic approach of Palo Alto could be used to reduce psychosocial risks in organizations.