Allan Hunter

I live in Watertown, MA., in a wonderful neighborhood that is surrounded by churches and places of worship. Two of these have just been turned into condo developments, but until a few months ago I could count three Catholic churches, one Methodist, one Episcopalian, one Orthodox Greek, one Armenian, a mosque, a Buddhist temple and several shopping malls for those who worship material things. I've lived here nearly twenty years. 

I was born in England and educated at Oxford University, where I gained my doctorate in literature.  My father was a career Air Force officer and my mother was Swiss so we traveled extensively, and this has been a habit I’ve cherished ever since. I’ve spent substantial amounts of time in Madagascar, South Africa, Tunisia, India, Peru, Belgium, Italy, and various other parts of Europe. 

During my travels and my studies it became clear to me that I was on some sort of pilgrimage to find out what it was that made the difference between simply looking at scenery and being transformed by the experience of a foreign place. The question remained unresolved, so I went on with my life, nursing it. I taught at Oxford, I worked with disturbed adolescents, I suffered a severe respiratory illness and, not realizing how sick I was, tried acupuncture in case it could give me any relief. It saved my life, and, more importantly it led me to think in new ways about my relationship to my life, my body, and my life-direction.

I came to the US, where I worked at Curry College, and for a while at Boston University with their prison program, and in my spare time developed a counseling business based on classes I’d developed exploring the therapeutic uses of writing.  This experience became a book, ‘The Sanity Manual’, and then produced a second book, ‘Life Passages’, in which I showed how we can use writing and drawing exercises for self-exploration.  During this time I also worked with the Blue Hills Writing Institute (since its inception, in fact), where the focus is on Memoir writing. This led to the book I wrote with my father: ‘From Coastal Command To Captivity’. Writing his wartime memoir with him brought us closer, and it had real value in another way too, because it led him to a place of substantial peace after many years of haunting, untreated trauma.

In all this it became ever clearer to me that we write to discover who we are, and that the very greatest literature has always been a source of wisdom for those who are interested in personal development.  This, in turn, has led me to the discovery that there are six archetypes or developmental mile-posts that dominate literature.  There are always six, always in the same order, always to do with the same issues.  Always. This may just be the way human beings make sense of our world, or it may be something in our DNA.  I can’t prove that, but it seems extremely likely. And that’s when ‘Stories We Need to Know’ came to find me, demanding that I write it.  I delayed for a while, testing out the insights at its core, and I found them to be true wherever I applied them.  So I wrote the book. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it used me to get written.

After writing “Stories’ it became plain to me that another book was waiting for me to get to work and write it.  “The Six Archetypes of Love” has just been completed, and will appear in the Fall of 2008.

I'm married, with two astonishing step-children who keep me on my toes, and amid my various hobbies I count the restoration of  vintage motorcycles.

In my youth I traveled the world.  My father was in the Air Force so we changed homes every couple of years.  In addition my mother is Swiss, so we went there on a regular basis. I've lived in Belgium, Italy (especially in Sardinia), and Madagascar.  I've traveled to India, South Africa, Peru and Tunisia, and all through Europe.  It's given me a different outlook on life.