Ellen Handler Spitz to Speak on Translation
In the first two days of August, the Austen Riggs Center will be hosting its annual Creativity Seminar. This year, Ellen Handler Spitz will be directing the conference, holding court, and bringing her experience as an aesthetician and student of psychoanalysis to a re-evaluation of the nature of translation. "Translation," is the conference's theme, and what for two days the attendees will be tweaking and re-adjusting their shared concept of. As an engine of description describing itself, the conference released a soundbite, stating their intentions: "to stimulate our use of these ideas in our various clinical, educational, and other settings.”
Spitz brings a perspective to the floor that is at least book-length: Illuminating Childhood. Her work has centered on art as a kind of prescription for the human condition: art as anti-depressant, or art as the confounding vitamins of the soul.
All in other words, this has been a brief press release from humanity's marketing department saying, "We've just approved a campaign to make the human experience a little better. Don't worry, we've got our best people on it."
You can read more details on the Austen Riggs Center's Creativity Seminar here. To find out more about Ellen Handler Spitz' published work on the intersection of art and psychology, be sure to check out Illuminating Childhood, a series of Spitz' eight best essays on the value of self-discovery via creative expression.
