At the heart of the debate on the status of ecosystemy in relational professions, we present this construct in the perspective of discourse, with an accent on authors’ discourse as a way to reflect on this construct. More specifically, we provide a critical analysis of the discourse conveyed by Bronfenbrenner around the ecosystemic approach he developed progressively between 1950 and 1980. We use Gergen and Gergen (1986) as well as Törrönen (2000, 2001a, 2001b) to identify four characteristics of this approach in a diachronic perspective: the goals, the classification, the story line and the positioning of the actors.