allanhunter.net Blog

One of the things I do in my life is that I work with writers as they wrestle with writing their memoirs.  I’ve done this for twenty-five years in one way and another, and for the past six years I’ve worked with the Blue Hills Writing Institute at Curry College, Massachusetts.  When people ask me what I do I say I’m a memoir mid-wife; I help memoirs gets born.  And there’s more to it than one might think.  Ask any mother who’s just given birth to her first child, and she’ll say roughly the same thing.

This probably doesn’t sound very vital to many of you – except that when we write a memoir we’re coming to understand our lives in a new way, and so the process could be described as a process of discovery, as ‘soul work’ – absolutely vital soul work if we are to become fully alive to our lives.  It’s a term I use to my writers about half way through the process, and rarely before.  Some of them are still hoping that this writing will vindicate them in the eyes of the world and make them rich.  That’s not a bad aim, but it doesn’t always dovetail with the actual uncovering of deep truths.

So what does this soul work look like? One thing that constantly surprises me is just how regularly writers go through six archetypal stages of growth as they write.  I’ve been doing this now for so many years that I can, to some extent, predict where they are and therefore where they need to go.

This is how it works: most writers feel the desire to write a memoir, for reasons that may not be entirely clear, but which are sufficiently compelling to make them take the urge seriously.  So they sign up for one of my classes.  To some extent when they do this they are Innocents – they’ve not done this before, and they want someone to tell them what to do.  They seem to assume that I have all the answers, and that they just have to listen attentively, take notes, and color within the lines.  This is a wonderful, trusting stage, and part of my job is to let them know that no good piece of writing was ever produced by a committee.  They’re going to have to find their own voice, first

This can be puzzling for some writers.  They become Orphans, and like orphans anywhere they want someone to tell them what to do and take care of them.  Perhaps they have a favorite memoir they’ve read, so they may decide to copy that approach and style.  This isn’t a bad place to be, but it isn’t the fullness of who they could be.  Often the writer at this stage is in need of a lot of reassurance, and wants approval.  My task is to keep up the pressure on them to produce new material, usually in response to writing prompts and exercises, and so break through this Orphan way of thinking. A number of techniques can be useful here, and perhaps the best ones are those exercises that lead the writer to recognize unconscious motivations and evasions.  In this way we can gently dismantle the boundaries of the mind-constructed limitations she may have. Put another way, I also have to let the writer know that I don’t know the parts of her life that she doesn’t, as yet, know or comprehend.  I don’t know the hidden resentments and fears peculiar to each one of them - yet.  Their task is to find them so we can work with them together.

When this happens the writer has a moment of revelation.  She sees she can write this memoir however she wants, as long as it gets to the truth of who she is.  Suddenly it’s not enough to be a ‘victim’ of circumstances, or play the ‘righteous’ card, because no one is always right and no victim is always blameless if she stays in that mental place for a lifetime. It’s not about being polite, either, and smoothing over things. This is when the Pilgrim archetype emerges, and the writer decides that this memoir business may be more varied than she’d at first thought.  She sets out on a journey of discovery and is sometimes surprised by the sorts of things that emerge. For example, villains may have been nasty, but they may also have had reasons for what they did that make them seem human for the first time.  Perhaps selfish parents are seen with more compassion, too, as their neediness and frailties emerge alongside their neglect and inadvertent cruelties.

Gradually this Pilgrim writer begins to see that she’s writing in order to make sense of the confusing aspects of her life, to understand what she can do to change the way she lives now – and this is when the Warrior-Lover archetype emerges.  Writers become courageous, and are not put off by concerns about whether others ‘like’ what they say or the way they say it.  The aim of unearthing the truth requires courage and compassion in equal amounts.  Sometimes this changes the way writers relate to family members – usually because the relationship is now forced to be real as opposed to existing within defined roles. It may be uncomfortable at first to break the patterns of a lifetime, but it’s usually healthy. This is the point when one can see family members – especially parents - as flawed and difficult, and yet still love them.

As the writer becomes more aware of this Warrior-Lover archetype she also notices that the story materials are not just about herself.  There is usually a larger story that many readers can identify with, because few human experiences are absolutely unique (although the specific events of each life certainly are unique).  This leads to a different relationship to the story of one’s life.  One sees it in all its complexity and contradiction, just as a ruler might look at a functioning kingdom and see it made up of all sorts of citizens, good, bad, and indifferent, and recognize that the kingdom needs them all, every single one. That’s the Monarch archetype emerging.  This archetype is not determined to prove anything – as the Warrior-Lover might be. Instead the Monarch seeks to show things and let the reader decide.  The Monarch shows the events of a life, but does not tell us what to think, necessarily.

And when that happens we are a very short distance from the final archetype, the Magician.  The Magician has now moved into a completely different relationship to her life.  She sees it not as a series of actual events, but as a time in which she moved closer to, or further away from the true, spiritual, version of herself; loving, accepting, but not powerless.  This kind of writer has achieved real wisdom about her life and the lives of those around her.  The writing she produces has a lightness of touch, a sense of wonder, and a generosity that inspires others.  For that’s what Magicians do.  They don’t order people about (as Monarchs do) or try to please (as Orphans do). Instead they write their truths and inspire others.  What does this look like?  Well, have you ever read a poem or looked at a picture that just took your breath away?  That’s when you’ve been invited into the Magician’s spell.  Magicians don’t usually have overt morals to their tales.  They don’t declare that bad things inevitably come back to hurt bad people, or something like tat.  Instead they might show that bad actions have a way of haunting those associated with them, wreaking damage in subtle ways, perhaps…. The Magician invites us to observe the mystery, the beauty, the wonder of the world, and if we’re paying attention we will certainly be changed by it.

I see my writers going through most, if not all, of these stages.  Some come back years later and tell me that they’ve experienced the Magician stage in their writing, that they’ve felt those moments as important and transcendent, and that they want to bring more of that energy into their everyday lives.  This delights me.  For, whether the memoir sells a million copies or not is really beside the point.  What is vital is the soul work that leads each writer to peace and wisdom.

The Presidential Candidates as Archetypes? –Here’s another way to look at what they offer, and a different way to make your choice for November.

The amount of TV and radio time currently devoted to the Presidential candidates and their different pronouncements is enough to make many of us wish to turn off our electronic gadgets and never hear about them again.  Is this candidate a ‘fresh new voice’ or ‘inexperienced’? Is that one a seasoned politician or just an old hack? And how can we possibly decide? The talk commentators seem to go round and round and it’s hardly possible to come to an assessment that isn’t affected by their views.

There may be a different way to look at the candidates, however, one that can cut through the posturing and the words of the spin-doctors to shed new light on this entire situation. It may not be a way that is acceptable to all voters, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering.  For there are other methods of assessing the worth of a human being, and they are not far away if we want to use them.  If we choose to assess the candidates in terms of a yardstick that has gone through all of Western Civilization’s greatest writing – some three thousand years of it – then the notion of stages of personal development needs to be entertained. Western literature – including the Koran and the New Testament - shows us that there are six archetypal stages a person can pass through on his or her way to full authentic self-awareness.  The suggestion is clear – the person who has learned important life lessons and moved through specific stages of intellectual and personal growth may well be the one who is best fitted to rule.  This has nothing to do with education, money, background, or privilege.  Instead it has everything to do with who the candidates are in themselves. If we chose to see how they measure up to that yardstick we may be surprised by what we see.

The six levels, in ascending order, are Innocent, Orphan, Pilgrim, Warrior-Lover, Monarch, and Magician.  Let’s see how they appear in the candidates’ lives. Of course, we can only assess any of the candidates based upon what we have been allowed to see of their lives rather than what they may be like in private, so any assessment is likely to be flawed.  Yet it may also allow us some valuable insights.

John McCain was a military hero who spent time in Vietnam as a prisoner of war, and his courage and resilience in that difficult situation have been rightly praised. This would seem to place him as a Warrior–Lover, one who fights for and loves his country.  And that seems very likely.  He certainly seems very keen on people being patriotic. Yet what we have to ask is not what he’s done, but what direction he’s going in now.  In fact he has voted with George Bush over 90% of the time, and the rival campaign suggests that his aim is four more years of the same policies. They seek to show him as a party hack, which is what the Orphan archetype typically embodies – the desire to carry on as before because real change is too threatening.  McCain has also presented himself as a ‘maverick’ - which he uses as a term to express independence, but actually is a term from cattle farming, that can mean unpredictable and even eccentric.  The Orphan archetype has a tendency to want to say just how ‘different’ he or she is from the others, and this might be an example of that slight difference that, in their own eyes, matters so much.  This is the ‘independence’ and ‘individuality’ of the person daring to be just a little bit different.  This is not the inventive thinker, the person who has an idea of the future role of the USA in the world. He does not seem to have a convincing political vision of his own. This tends to mark him as an Orphan thinker.

The choice of Sarah Palin as a running-mate was thought of as ‘daring’, and the focus has been on her governorship of Alaska, a very underpopulated state, and her work as a small town mayor. What we have to ask is whether or not she is a leader.  The press reports that she is determined, and fights hard, and that she’s referred to by some as ‘barracuda’ because of her determination.  We also know that she hunts large mammals, fishes, and has swelled the Alaskan corridors of power with her own appointees.  It would seem as if she is unafraid, strong, and determined.  The question we must ask is whether she has any political vision.  If she has we’ve yet to hear it.  What we do know is that she is very certain of her beliefs, and that they are right.  Some might call this firmness, others would call it doctrinaire, or even rigid.  One of the marks of the Orphan archetype is that it can masquerade as the Warrior-Lover.  It looks as if the person is strong and has real beliefs.  But sometimes those beliefs are just thinly veiled prejudices, largely untested.  It looks like we have a real hero when in fact all we’ve got is a bully.

In contrast Senator Biden certainly has plenty of Senate experience, and four years ago he came close to being the Democratic nominee for President.  Does this make him a failure, or does this make him a man who can pick himself up after a defeat and carry on anyway? Given the information that his first wife and child were killed in a car crash, and that he was tempted to give up politics, but did not, we could argue that here is a man who truly does not give up easily because he believes in the value of what he is doing – and it’s not a personal value, merely. He believes he can do good for the country.  In this respect he seems to match the Warrior-Lover archetype, since he did not give up but put himself back into politics.  He eventually remarried, too, and the image we have of him is of the loving and devoted family man. It’s surprising that the McCain campaign doesn’t seem to want to stress the family in the same way. If Biden’s message would seem to be that he’s prepared to serve his country even though that might mean he’s not the high profile one.  He’s content to be vice-president if it means getting the job done.  For him this is less about ego, about Joe Biden, and more about service.  If we compare him with Senator Palin the emphasis in her campaign and the way it’s reported emphasizes how she was a glamorous former beauty queen and an energetic force who gets things done.  The emphasis is on her ego – what she got done - rather than on what she managed to persuade others to do as part of a governing team.  For governing is not just about ego and giving orders.  It’s not about force and pushing people around. Real change happens because a leader is able to motivate a sufficient number of people to take the necessary responsibility so change can happen.  We know this.  It’s fundamental to what’s happening in Iraq.  We have to support the Iraqi forces now, so they will carry on the work of keeping order after we leave.  Their hearts have to be in it, or it’ll all crumble when our troops are gone.  Senator Biden seems to have the ability to put the task of leading first, and his own glory second, and that’s the mark of a real leader. From that perspective he is a true Monarch, nurturing, developing friendships and connections, reaching out to others.

And this brings us to the rhetoric that we have heard coming from Senator Obama.  His catch-phrase is ‘together we can’ – and that is not an idle statement.  What it acknowledges is that we are all going to need to work together to make reasonable progress in the times ahead.  It also signals, loud and clear, that not working together, slipping into the old ways of one party bickering with another and blocking any initiative that’s not theirs will inevitably damage us all.  His campaign has stressed that we are not just rival parties. We are ‘not red states and blue states, but the United States of America’.  The roar of approval from the crowd when he made that often-repeated remark suggests that he had articulated what many people had been longing to hear for some time.  Obama seems to be advocating for a new way of working, and that takes courage and vision. It’s not about him, it’s about all of us and the task that needs to be done. If we want a comparison, George Bush’s ‘I’m the decider’ phrase was almost a totally opposite approach, one that put George Bush as the most important figure.  It was about him, not about the job that needed to be done.

Obama’s memoirs have been controversial in some circles, yet we could certainly choose to see them as an admission that he had to come a long way, personally and spiritually, before he arrived at his beliefs.  He was a bi-racial kid who almost got lost when he began experimenting with drugs (on his own admission).  To some extent, therefore, he was a lost Orphan who found a way forward.  He made his pilgrimage towards the big questions of life – what he could do to make things better – and then he fought for the things he believed in as a Warrior-Lover.  Now he recognizes what it truly takes to rule – reasoned consensus.  And to get that a politician has to motivate, inspire, and demonstrate real courage every day.  In the past it was almost unthinkable for any politician to admit to having made mistakes at any point – think of Bill Clinton who ‘didn’t inhale’ or of his deviousness with Monica Lewinsky – yet here we have a candidate who seems to be saying that of course we have to make mistakes, or how can we ever learn anything? Obama’s admission, even a few years ago, might have been enough to get him thrown off the ticket.  This is truly breaking the mold – but as anyone would acknowledge it was a very strange mold.  A politician who has never made a mistake is a politician who has never done anything definite. To be honest and courageous is not what we usually expect of our political figures, and Obama surprised us into seeing the depths of our own cynicism. That’s the task of a real leader.  As a Monarch he can work with others and seek to nurture all the citizens, even those he may not personally care for.

Better yet is that Obama seems to have what it takes to inspire others, to give them real hope.  This is not the bogus optimism of the tax-handback that Bush thought would make us feel that all was well in America.  This is the hope that motivates us all to roll up our sleeves and get some work done to improve things.  One volunteer is worth six conscripts any day of the week.  What Obama seems to be capable of doing is generating willing volunteers, and plenty of them.  He’s an inspiration, and at times like that he shows himself capable of being a Magician. For when we all are inspired miraculous changes can happen.

Seen from the perspective of archetypes we can make a good case for the Democratic ticket, and a rather less strong case for the Republicans.  Of course, people are more than just archetypes, and we can only go on what we are shown.  We don’t know large portions of each candidate’s life.  Yet, if we choose to see them in terms of archetypes we may just astonish ourselves at the great divide between them.  Do we want an Orphan President, one who will toe the line and bully anyone who questions?  Or do we want someone who is a Monarch and can facilitate the astonishing achievements of which we Americans are capable, when we’re given a chance?

The time is approaching when we’ll have to choose.

Don’t you just love to be able to even say a phrase like that?  I’m sure I do.

The good news in question is perhaps a bit selfish, but it has to do with the arrival of my website: www.sixarchetypes.com.  I think it looks pretty darn good, and it certainly took a lot of effort to get it into cyberspace in its intended form.

One might be excused for thinking that with all the progress and various improvements available that websiting would be easier than ever.  This, dear friends, is not the case - at least if you want something that looks a little more interesting than the standard items on offer, one that can provide links to a decent amount of content.

So it exists.  Take a look.  Tell your friends.  Buy some books. Leave some comments.  This blog will be linked in to it.  Me?  I’ll be thanking the powers that be, and Cathy my captive web-designer, that such a thing could ever make it into the world at all.

Gratitude is a wonderful thing to feel, I have to tell you.

Yes, dear readers, The Six Archetypes of Love is now available from Amazon.com and from other fine outlets, no doubt.  I prefer Amazon because Barnes and Noble charge sales tax in Massachusetts, and Amazon, who are based somewhere else, don’t. Amazon also offers a lower ‘promotional’ price on new books.

The Six Archetypes takes the whole idea of archetypes to the next stage.  It suggests that since these archetypes obviously exist we then have to ask what they exist for. The answer is alarmingly simple - - we may be here on earth in order to find out how to get along with each other in the most productive and compassionate way.  Love, in fact, at the very highest level, is what we are called upon to live. The alternative, of course, is strife, war, and misery, which we’re already very good at, and which have shown themselves to be rather hollow achievements. So we really do need to understand love a little better.

It’s already been hailed as an important book. That’s flattering, of course, but I didn’t write it to feel flattered.  I wrote it because it needed to be read.

The new website specifically for the book www.sixarchetypes.com is almost ready.  It looks lovely, but it just isn’t up and cranking yet. Obviously the universe wants me to learn about being patient.

If you’d like to check out the Six Archetypes, then the Amazon site has some good things on it, including advance reviews. If you want autographed and inscribed copies, just drop me a line saying what you want written, and you can have as many as you wish for $11 each plus mailing of $3 per copy. One lady asked me to inscribe one of my books with something extravagantly romantic, so I happily wrote ‘Dearest Darling B—, We’ll always have those memories of that wild week in Paris….’  So far her husband has not come after me with a meat ax.  So you see, you can have any inscription you wish!