[3][4] She is known for her numerous articles in The New Republic[5] examining how the arts and culture interweave and continuously transform daily life from explorations of Maurice Sendak and sexuality to the role of children's books in India.

For instance, following the death of famed children's author Maurice Sendak, National Public Radio interviewed Spitz[9] for her insights on his life and enduring influence.

Drawing on her early experience as an artist, Ellen Handler Spitz then went on to establish her writing career by exploring the arts psychologically and by examining their relationship to childhood.

Her work ranges topically from painting and sculpture to observations on ancient Greek drama and children's literature, but it always concerns the triumvirate of art, psychology, and childhood.

Spitz's metaphor for this project is Teiresias, the blind seer of ancient Greece, and she works psychologically with a wide swath of subjects including 1970s NYC subway car graffiti, a 1987 exhibition of African sculpture, a composition of postmodern music, and paintings by a schizophrenic child, among others.

Museums of the Mind begins with a psychologically inflected, thematic study of selected paintings by the distinguished Belgian Surrealist René Magritte, in which Spitz traces the effects of the artist's mother's suicide by drowning when he was a boy.

Using her psychological acumen, Spitz reveals how classic children's books transmit wisdom, shape tastes, implant subtle biases, and stimulate moral reflection.