Dr. Allan G. Hunter received his doctorate in literature from Oxford University, which led him to study the deep correspondences between mental disturbance and literary expression. He is a counselor, a therapist, and a professor of literature at Curry College in Boston, where he also teaches memoir writing for the Blue Hills Writing Institute. He is the author of several books, including Spiritual Hunger, Gratitude and Beyond, The Six Archetypes of Love, Stories We Need to Know, The Path of Synchronicity, Write Your Memoir, and Princes, Frogs & Ugly Sisters. He lives in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Chapter 1 What if there is a road-map to personal growth? What if that map exists in our culture's literature?
Chapter 2 An overview of the six archetypal stages and what it means to work with archetypes.
Chapter 3 A discussion of the individual stages: The Innocent.
Chapter 4 The Orphan: Looking for something to attach to.
Chapter 5 The Pilgrim: Looking for meaning.
Chapter 6 The Warrior-Lover: The twinned attributes of love and decisiveness that must be mastered, even if they seem contradictory at first sight.
Chapter 7 The Monarch Pair. The alliance between the King and Queen, 'male' power and 'female' compassion.
Chapter 8 The Magician: Bringing out the best in others.
Chapter 9 The Road to Magician Level, and the Role of the Ego.
Chapter 10 The Archetypes and their Sub-Stages.
Part II
Chapter 11 Where Did these Ideas Come From? A specific assessment of how this theory of the stages came about, the empirical research, and a case history.
Part III
Chapter 12 The Stages as Reflected in Literature. The Odyssey, the Oresteiad, Sophocles' Oedipus, the New Testament, and Sir Gawain.
Chapter 13 The Literature, the Modern Period: Shakespeare, Marlowe, James, Dickens, Conrad, and J. K. Rowling.
Chapter 14 What the Literature has Shown: The way we human beings make sense of our life-journeys.
Chapter 15 Identifying Stages of Development in Oneself and Others: And why this is essential.
Chapter 16 Love and Creativity: How to nurture them, and the way towards peace.

A combination of therapy and expertise in literature, this book explains the six archetypes derived from 4,000 years of literature and how they may guide unhappy people seeking meaning in their lives. Holding up the great books as the best way to understand these timeless story elements, the discussion devotes a chapter to each of the six archetypes: the innocent, the orphan, the pilgrim, the warrior-lover, the monarch pair, and the magician. Story structures are shown to be particularly suited to therapy with adolescents, many of whom have never stepped away from television and the shopping mall long enough to understand their unmet spiritual needs.