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.

© Dr. Allan Hunter, 2008

Dr. Allan Hunter's two book on the way archetypes work in our lives are
Stories We Need to Know: Reading Your Life Path in Literature,
and most recently The Six Archetypes of Love: From Innocent to Magician.
Both are available from Amazon.com or Findhornpress.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Allan Hunter was born in England in 1955 and completed all his degrees at Oxford University, emerging with a doctorate in English Literature in 1983. His first book was Joseph Conrad and the Ethics of Darwinism. In 1986, after working at Fairleigh Dickinson University's British campus and at Peper Harow Therapeutic Community for disturbed adolescents, he moved to the US. For the past twenty years he has been a professor of literature at Curry College in Massachusetts, and a therapist. He has produced two books specifically aimed at using writing and drawing exercises therapeutically - The Sanity Manual and Life Passages. Both books are based on his revolutionary interactive writing exercises, tried and proven in counselling sessions and classes. While working with clients in this way he began to uncover the presence of a series of archetypes within their writings. This led to his present work with the formulation of the six archetypal stages of spiritual development.

Four years ago he began teaching with the Blue Hills Writing Institute and he has remained with it ever since, working with students to explore the memoir and life-writing. His own experience of this medium is reflected in From Coastal Command to Captivity; The Memoir of a Second World War Airman, a project on which he worked with his father up to the time of his death. It required extensive reworking to bring this memoir to completion. As in all his books, the emphasis is on the healing nature of the stories we weave for ourselves if we choose to connect to the archetypal tales of our culture.