Michael Vannoy Adams is an internationally prominent Jungian psychoanalyst and licensed clinical social worker in private practice in New York City. He holds a D.Phil. from the University of Sussex in England, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar, and an MSW from New York University. He is a clinical associate professor at the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, a faculty member at the Jungian Psychoanalytic Association and the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and has taught at the New School, where he formerly served as associate provost. He has also been a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in India.

Adams is the author of four major books that have shaped contemporary Jungian discourse: The Multicultural Imagination: Race, Color, and the Unconscious (Routledge, 1996), which brought critical race theory into dialogue with analytical psychology; The Fantasy Principle: Psychoanalysis of the Imagination (Brunner-Routledge, 2004); The Mythological Unconscious (Spring Publications, 2nd revised edition, 2010); and For Love of the Imagination: Interdisciplinary Applications of Jungian Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2012), which extends Jungian thought into cultural, economic, political, literary, and artistic domains.

He is the recipient of three Gradiva Awards from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, recognizing excellence in psychoanalytic writing. His work consistently explores the role of imagination, image, and culture in psychological life, and he has published numerous articles and reviews on topics ranging from dreams and mythology to the cultural unconscious.

Training & lineage

  • D.Phil. University of Sussex, England
  • MSW New York University

Specialties

Adams’s intellectual lineage Summarize Adams’s publications
For clinicians and organizations

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