Edith Kramer

Kramer eventually returned to her home in Austria. She died in 2014.

Kramer's life work was spent with children and adolescents that were often unable to explain their feelings through the use of words. In 1958 Kramer published Art Therapy in a Children's Community, based on her time working with the students at the Wiltwyck School. Kramer also worked at Jacobi Hospital in their child psychiatric ward for 13 years. In 1971 Kramer published Art as Therapy with Children. Kramer wrote in her books of her experiences with her clients. Kramer worked for 14 years at the Jewish Guild for the Blind. In 1976 Kramer, with the help of Dr. Laurie Wilson, founded the graduate program in Art Therapy at New York University. While at NYU, Kramer came up with an important method of the program and called it, “the Art Therapist third hand intervention.” This concept called for the versatility of the art therapist. "The third hand can be summed up as the art therapist's ability to facilitate a person's artistic process (such as strategically helping the individual mix paints for a desired color or intervening at critical moments during art making)". It is important to note that Kramer believed that product was as important as process in Art Therapy. She felt denying the client the gratification of the end product was robbing them. Kramer believed that Art Therapy should fall more in the humanities area than psychology. She asserted that art therapy was not a replacement, but a supplement to psychotherapy.

Edith Kramer became a U.S. citizen in 1944. Kramer received an honorary doctorate in 1996 from Norwich University in Northfield, Vermont. She helped develop one of the country's earliest art therapy graduate degree programs at New York University. She continued to work in NYU's Graduate Art Therapy Program from 1973 to 2005 as an adjunct professor and was an assistant professor in the Graduate Art Therapy Program at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The American Art Therapy Association gave her the award of "Honorary Life Member,” a mark of highest esteem.

With the threat of Nazi invasion looming, Kramer took refuge in America in 1938. In New York City, she worked for three years teaching sculpture at a progressive school called the Little Red School House. During World War II Kramer worked as a machinist at a tool and die shop in the Soho district of New York City. She stayed after her shift to draw the other workers in their industrial setting. These works were rendered in the social realist style. In 1947 Kramer visited some of the earliest known artwork, in the caves at Lascaux. Kramer spoke of these cave paintings as an example of the universal language of art.

At the age of 33 she returned to New York City, with hopes of making a living as an artist. Still in her 33rd year, Kramer was offered a job at Wiltwyck School for Boys, a school and residential treatment facility for children with behavioral and emotional needs. This job was arranged for her by psychoanalyst and board member at Wiltwyck, Dr. Viola Bernard. Dr. Bernard gave Kramer the title, "Art Therapist," noting that few teachers were willing to work with such challenging students. It was here that Kramer worked with disturbed boys, ages 8 through 13, for the following seven years.

Edith Kramer was born in 1916 in Vienna, Austria.

Edith Kramer was a niece of Theodor Kramer (1897–1958) and Elisabeth Neumann-Viertel (1900–1994).