Ellen Handler Spitz writes, teaches, and lectures on the visual, literary, and performing arts and psychology and on the aesthetic lives of children. Her background encompasses four years as a research candidate at Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, plus the 2008 Erikson Scholar position at Austen Riggs. She has held residential fellowships at the Getty Center, Bunting Institute at Harvard, Clark Art Institute, Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Camargo Foundation in France, and Rutgers Center for Children and Childhood Studies. She is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She authored numerous works including Art and Psyche, Image and Insight, Museums of the Mind, Inside Picture Books, The Brightening Glance, Illuminating Childhood, and Freud and Forbidden Knowledge (co-edited). Her reviews appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, and she contributes to Artcritical. Her work has been translated into Italian, Japanese, and Serbian, with recent research focusing on art illustration and children's aesthetic development.
- Art and Psyche: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics (1985) Book
- Inside Picture Books (1999) Book
- The Brightening Glance: Imagination and Childhood (2006) Book
- Image and Insight: Essays in Psychoanalysis and the Arts (1991) Book
- Museums of the Mind (1994) Book
Roundtable Appearances
