ABSTRACT
Through the lectures and writings of Ivor A. Richards, Eric L. Trist had become interested in psychology, especially Gestalt psychology. The Gestalt School of Psychology ran contrary to the prevailing psychology which assumed we perceive with our senses, and analyze energies from the physical world into simple, independent, and unnoticeable sensations. Trist was attracted to the ideas of a German Gestalt psychologist, Kurt Lewin, and drawn deeply to Lewin’s recent publication in 1931. The article described how a conceptual change might take place in modern psychology. Trist argued that in psychology, concepts were largely Aristotelian, emphasizing only defined and abstract classes of behavior, or people, as indicators of their “essential nature” in psychological explanations, and ignoring evidence to the contrary. Trist discovered that the main funds available for psychological research at Cambridge were for studies in physiological psychology.
