As a psychoanalyst, he made some important contributions to the psychology of the artist and the psychoanalytic interpretation of works of art and caricature.
In the review Imago he published his first psychoanalytic study, "Ein geisteskranker Bildhauer" (A mentally ill sculptor) on Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.
A year later, in 1928, Kris intensified his working relationship with Freud, and he became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
In 1933, Freud asked Kris to become editor of the Imago magazine, in which he published a paper relating art to psychology in 1936.
Kris was one of the first developers of the new ego psychology, a school of psychoanalysis that originated in Freud's structural model.