Juhani Ihanus has belonged to the Faculty of the University of Helsinki since 1982 (PhD in psychology in 1990) and worked as a Senior Lecturer in Psychology until 2021. Currently, he has the title of Docent in Cultural Psychology (at the University of Helsinki), in Art Education and Art Psychology (at Aalto University) and in the History of Science and Ideas (at the University of Oulu). He has been a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science, at the University of Cambridge and at Tallinn University.

Starting from 1982, every academic year Ihanus has had several lecture and web courses on clinical psychology, personality psychology, developmental psychology, psychotherapy, history of psychology, theoretical psychology, and psychology of art and literature. He has had several supervisory works at the graduate and postgraduate levels, and he has been a pre-examiner and an opponent of several doctoral dissertations. He has been a member of the board of directors at the Open University of the University of Helsinki (2007–2010, a vice-member 2010–2014), and in 2014–2017 he has been a member of the executive board of the Open University. He has been a chief of several continuing education training programmes since 1989. 

Ihanus is an author for over 500 publications, including refereed articles in scientific journals, refereed book articles, 17 books, 12 edited books, as well as essays, reviews and popular articles. He has published in different areas of psychology, psychoanalysis, psychohistory, history of science, literature and visual arts. As a pioneer of poetry therapy in Finland he has written and edited several books about poetry therapy and therapeutic writing. He is a founder and an honorary member of the Finnish Association for Biblio/Poetry therapy. He is a member of the Editorial Board of The Arts in Psychotherapy, Journal of Poetry Therapy, Journal of Psychohistory, Scriptum: Creative Writing Research Journal and Kirjallisuusterapia, a Co-Editor-in-Chief of Psykoterapia, and a reviewer of several acadamic journals. At the Psychology Section of the Board for National (Finnish) Student Examinations Ihanus acts as a censor.            

Besides scientific publications, Ihanus has written four books of poetry (two of them in English), two books of aphorisms (the other in English), a book of short prose, literary essays, critiques and separate poems published in different forums. Ihanus is a member of both The Union of Finnish Writers and The Finnish Association of Non-fiction Writers. Ihanus has translated works from English, German and French into Finnish (among them works by G. C. Lichtenberg, E. M. Cioran, Juliet Mitchell and Karl Kraus). He is also a member of the transartistic and -disciplinary Sjählö 9 group, and has taken part in its exhibitions and activities.