[Burnout : ten years later.]

The important literature on burn-out or professionnal exhaustion is examined here from three aspects: socio-cultural anthropology, biological anthropology and ethnopsychiatry. On the socio-cultural level, the emergence of burn-out is seen as an epiphenomenon arising conjointly from a new work ethic and a new concept of the person; on the biological level, the burnout is presented in relation to two main areas of study: as an adaptative strategy used by individuals to face particularly demanding situations in their working environment and as a particular modality of the interrelations between physical, psychological and behavioral dimensions in a person; on the ethnopsychiatric level, the burn-out is not interpreted as a new category in the description of illnessess but rather as a model of behavior more socially accepted and as an integrative concept that allows one to give meaning to a diversified group of symptoms. Studies on burn-out indicators, their causes, its neuro-physiology and its definition are explicitly discussed according to three perspectives: socio-cultural, biological and ethnopsychiatric.