Michael Edwards

Michael Edwards (2 November 1930 – 13 March 2010) was a painter, pioneer art therapist, analytical psychologist and curator of the picture archive of the artwork of patients of C. G. Jung. He was also the first Emeritus Professor of Art Therapy at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Michael Edwards was born in 1930 near Epping Forest on the eastern outskirts of London, England. After national service he studied at the St Albans Art College with the painter Norman Adams. Edwards was the course director for the annual residential summer trainings at the Champernowne Trust until 2005.

Edwards was an early and leading proponent of the field of art therapy. He was a founding member, chair, fellow and honorary life member of the British Association of Art Therapists.

As a Jungian teacher and practitioner, Edwards influenced the field of art therapy internationally to appreciate the potential of symbols and images to carry multiple and ambiguous meanings. He taught that approaching a painting or a drawing as if it were "independent and semi-autonomous" would amplify rather than reduce its meanings and allow imaginative dialogue, to the end of deepening understanding of the art for both the patient and the therapist.

Edwards died in 2010 in Falmouth, Cornwall. He was survived by his third wife and by seven children,

Selected publications

"Art therapy now". Inscape, 5(1), 18-21. (1981) "Jungian analytic art therapy". In Judith A. Rubin (Ed.), Approaches to art therapy: Theory and technique (pp. 92–113). New York: Brunner/Mazel. (1987). "Learning from images". In R. Goldstein (Ed.), Images, meanings, and connections: Essays in memory of Susan R. Bach. Einseideln, Switzerland: Daimon Verlag. (1999). A Jungian circumambulation of art & therapy: Ornithology for the birds. Exeter: Insider Art. (2010).