Author: Elaine Aron

The Highly Sensitive Person appeared in 1996 and put a name to a trait Elaine Aron had been studying since 1990: sensory processing sensitivity, measured by the Highly Sensitive Person Scale, a self-report questionnaire she designed with her husband, the Stony Brook psychologist Arthur Aron. Their estimate is that fifteen to twenty per cent of people score high on it. Aron, born in 1944, holds a master's in clinical psychology from Toronto's York University, plus a doctorate in clinical depth psychology from the Pacifica Graduate Institute, interned at the C. G. Jung Institute in San Francisco, and keeps a psychotherapy practice in Mill Valley, California. High sensitivity is a personality trait, not a recognised clinical diagnosis, a distinction she states herself. She also runs hsperson.com, which hosts the free self-test and sells her books, courses and workshops, so the measure and the business built on it come from the same hand. The Highly Sensitive Parent (2020) applies the framework to raising children.