The notion of psychosocial risk is relatively recent and has yet to be clearly defined. As no exact equivalent in the past has been found, historians need to exercise caution and avoid falling into the trap of anachronisms and analogies. Instead, they need to focus on how the parties involved perceive psychosocial risk. In this article, we shall examine how over two centuries the notion of risk took on a particular significance depending on specific events or periods. There is no standard

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... ch to the topic of work-related risk and extra-professional risk -it does not correspond to any one phenomenon or a particular idea. Villermé vs. Taylorism, worker exhaustion vs. productivity... social policymakers, the State or experts provide us with elements of comparison which give us insight to the specific nature of this recent period which could be described as a labour crisis.