Elizabeth Culler, a psychotherapist and longtime educator, died on February 6 in Hamden, Connecticut. She was 74 years old and had suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.
A native of New Haven, Dr. Culler came from a highly educated family. Her father was a scholar of Victorian literature and a professor of English at Yale University. Her mother, Helen Simpson Culler, received her doctoral degree in literature at Yale and went on to have a long career as a professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University.
After graduating from North Haven High School, Dr. Culler enrolled at Radcliffe College of Harvard University. She later transferred and earned a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of California, Berkeley. After a short stint as a teacher at an experimental school in California, she studied ceramics and sculpture at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill, California. In 1973, she established a co-operative pottery studio with three other women.
Dr. Culler went on to receive her master’s degree in art therapy from Goddard College in Baltimore. She worked as a therapist in a partial hospital psychiatric day program connected to Meriden Wallingford Hospital in Connecticut. Looking to further her skills in family therapy, she completed her doctorate in counseling psychology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Dr, Culler established a private practice in family and individual psychotherapy in New Haven in 1986. She served as an adjunct professor in the master’s degree program of marriage and family therapy at Fairfield University in Connecticut and as an associate professor in the master’s program in counseling psychology at Goddard College from 1993 to 1999. Until 2008, she worked at the Yale Child Study Center as the clinical coordinator of the family preservation program.