RESEARCH INTERESTS
States of consciousness
- states of consciousness, meditation
- content analysis of dreams
Personality
- operationalizing psychoanalytic concepts
- object relations and self-psychology views in psychoanalysis, Jung, transpersonal psychology Cognition
- metaphor and synesthesia
- theories of consciousness
- visual-spatial intelligence
Sociological and anthropological views
- religious and mystical movements

My overall interest in research on states of consciousness has been pursued through studies of dreaming, meditation and related states, and metaphor on the assumption that these inter-related phenomena can be understood as developments of a nonverbal, spatial symbolic capacity. Accordingly, most of my recent research has investigated the relation of different forms of dreaming (lucid dreams, nightmares) and proclivity for alterations of consciousness in wakefulness (spontaneous and aided by meditation) to multiple measures of synesthetic imagery, absorption and spatial cognitive skills (block designs, physical balance). My theoretical work has sought to integrate these findings through cognitive, psychoanalytic, and transpersonal perspectives - based in particular on a model of metaphoric self-referential awareness. My work will probably continue to go back and forth among the cognitive, personality, and societal implications of this material. Most recently I am working on the socio-cultural and historical bases of mystical religious movements of the 20th century.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Hunt, H. A cognitive-developmental theory of human consciousness: Incommensurable cognitive domains of purpose and cause as a conjoined ontology of inherent human unbalance. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2009, 16, 9, 27-54.

Hunt, H. Dark nights of the soul: Phenomenology and neurocognition of spiritual suffering in mysticism and psychosis. Review of General Psychology, 2007, 11 (3), 209-234.

Hunt, H. Why psychology is/is not traditional science: The self-referential bases of Psychological research and theory. Review of General Psychology, 2005, 9 (4), 358-374.

Hunt, H. Synesthesia, metaphor, and consciousness: A cognitive-developmental perspective. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2005, 12 (12), 26-45.

Hunt, H. Lives in Spirit: Precursors and Dilemmas of a Western Secular Mysticism. SUNY Press, 2003.

Hunt, H. (1999). Transpersonal and cognitive psychologies of consciousness: A necessary and reciprocal dialogue. In S. Hameroff, ed. Tucson III: Toward a Science of Consciousness. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

Hunt, H. (1998). "Triumph of the will": Heidegger's Nazism as spiritual pathology. Journal of Mind and Behavior, 19, 379-414.

Hunt, H. (1995). On the nature of consciousness: Cognitive, phenomenological, and transpersonal perspectives. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Hunt, H. (1989). The Multiplicity of Dreams: Memory, imagination, and consciousness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.