Illumination of childhood: portraits, fiction, film and theatre | by Ellen Handler Spitz (University of Michigan)

While the literature and the arts are rarely considered primary sources to understand human motivation and behavior, people reading novels, watch movies, watching TV and going to the theatre not only to be entertained but also to learn to another and to their topic. ILLUMINATING childhood formalizes this psychological knowledge quest in the field of the arts.

From the assumption that a talented artist, writer and filmmaker has the capacity we learn as much in a scene as a theorist may in a treaty or a therapist for a session, the author shares his intimate eight works thematically related to cinema and literature from the second half of the 20th century, touching on central issues of parent-child experience the relations, including trade secrets intrafamilial toxic, the disjunction between love and understanding and the duration of the effects of the parents died on their children. While the canons of the literature on children and the parent-child relations includes books that identify problems, propose solutions and present statistical data, childhood Illuminating offers a lifetime of experience through art, written for an audience - parents, teachers, those who engage with students from the art of literature and cinema and other mental health professionals.

"A brilliant and daring book on how art reveals life, how he illuminates the child beyond the development science can tell us."
-Jerome Bruner, University Professor, University of New York

"Combining psychoanalytically informed eloquently oracular a brilliant close reader criticism surgical precision, Ellen Handler Spitz reads our cultural fortunes on children and parents through works of art."  Move (in both senses of the word) of the serene fullness of Madonna of Piero della Francesca horror tireless Lessing fifth child birth, she reveals just how powerfully art brings us into contact with energy pulses in real life. »
-Maria Tatar, John l. Loeb Professor of Germanic languages and literatures, Harvard University

"Enlighten children is an interdisciplinary study marvelously well written and documented childhood in various media and media as well as by ethnicity, race, gender, culture and time.
-T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, distinguished professor of English and Director of African-Americans and Diaspora Studies, Vanderbilt University

Ellen Handler Spitz holds the with College position of Professor of Visual arts at the University of Maryland. She is the author of several books on art, psychology and imaging, including money-laundering Overview: imagination and childhood. Environmentally friendly research interests are the cultural life of young people; the relationship between aesthetics and psychology. and interconnections between literature, music, dance and Visual arts.

Jacket photo: courtesy of PhotoFest