Eric Trist: archives

Records relating to the career of Eric Trist, including publications by Trist and collected off prints, re-prints and articles, as well as correspondence with A K Rice and others, and material relating to work with the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR), including registered document reports.

1950s-1960s

4 boxes

Eric Trist (1909-1993) studied psychology at Cambridge, and became interested in the work of Kurt Lewin, who he visited in USA. He got a job at St Andrews, where he taught Isabel Menzies, and undertook research on unemployment.

During WWII, Trist worked as a clinical psychologist. Trist had been at Mill Hill EMS Hospital, London, and visited Wharncliffe where Rickman was experimenting. He was not in a position to leave Mill Hill to join the Tavistock Group as he was in a reserved occupation, so he joined the army in order to enter the RAMC and work with the Tavistock at No.1 War Officer Selection Board (WOSB). Trist was one of few people in Britain with a background in clinical psychology at the time. He devised a psychological testing programme (intelligence tests, TAT, life history questionnaire) for WOSBs. Trist moved on to Watford when No. 1 WOSB became the Research and Training Centre (RTC). He worked there for 3 months while the programme became operational. Trist had worked with Bion at No. 21 WOSB, where returned prisoners of war (POWs) were filtered, then moved to work on Civil Resettlement Units (CRUs) with A. T. M. Wilson, where he chose many of the other staff to join them. After the war, Trist joined the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.

Wellcome Collection also hold the following related archives: - Harold Bridger (PP/BRI) - Tommy Wilson (PP/TWI) - Alex Pollock (PP/POL) - The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (SA/TIH).

Acquired by Wellcome in April 2026 prior to the closure of the Mulberry Bush Third Space (MB3) archive service. This collection was originally acquired by the Planned Environment Therapy Trust Archive and Study Centre between 2000 and 2005, and donated as part of Harold Bridger's archive collection. This material was separated from the main Harold Bridger archive during cataloguing in 2021 to form its own archive collection. Ownership transferred by the Planned Environment Therapy Trust (PETT) to the Mulberry Bush Organisation at the end of December 2018, at which point it joined the Mulberry Bush Third Space (MB3) archive service.

Duplicate Tavistock Institute of Human Relations reports have been weeded out at the point of acquisition.

None expected.

Copyright in material created by Harold Bridger has been transferred to Wellcome Collection at the point of acquisition via Mulberry Bush Third Space Archive service (MB3) in 2026. This copyright was previously owned by the Planned Environment Trust Archive and Study Centre who acquired the collection and subsequently transferred to MB3 in December 2018. The copyright in all other material is held by a range of rights holders. You are free to use the material in any way that is permitted by copyright exceptions and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights holder.

This collection is currently uncatalogued and cannot be ordered online. Due to ongoing work to improve our collections management systems we are unable to facilitate access to uncatalogued material until 2027.