Eric Lansdown Trist (11 September 1909 – 4 June 1993) was an English scientist and leading figure in the field of organizational development (OD).
He grew up in Dover experiencing dramatic air raids in the first world war, and attended the local county school.
When Kurt Lewin (who was Jewish) left Germany as Adolf Hitler came to power, he travelled to Palestine via the USA, stopping off in England, where Trist briefly met him and showed him around Cambridge.
Trist met Oscar Adolph Oeser,[5] who headed the psychology department at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and went on to study unemployment in Dundee.
The Maudsley, at Mill Hill, was a teaching hospital, and Trist attended seminars and met people from the Tavistock Clinic, whom he was keen to join.
Opposed by his boss, Sir Aubrey Lewis, who wouldn't let him go, he joined the Tavistock group in the army, as a way of getting free, and was replaced by Hans Eysenck.
Trist went to Edinburgh and worked on the War Office Selection Boards (WOSBs), with Jock Sutherland and Wilfred Bion.
[8] Kurt Lewin had moved from studying behaviour to engineering its change, particularly in relation to racial and religious conflicts, inventing sensitivity training, a technique for making people more aware of the effect they have on others, which some claim as the beginning of political correctness[citation needed].
Trist was much influenced by Melanie Klein, who visited the Tavistock, as well as by his colleagues John Bowlby, Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion and Jock Sutherland.