The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine N. Aron

At the end of sixth grade, my English teacher, Mrs. Lumsden, gave out “unusual awards.”  I was awarded “Best Observer.”    It is one of the signs that I am a highly sensitive person, and it is one of the happier memories related to my trait.

Research psychologist Elaine N. Aron describes highly sensitive people, or HSPs, in her book The Highly Sensitive Person.  HSPs, which make up about 15 to 20 percent of the population, are people with more responsive nervous system, who notice smaller stimuli and react more strongly to stimuli.

Aron is careful to distinguish the physiological trait of high sensitivity from inhibition, introversion, and shyness.  Okay, HSPs are often, or appear to be, introverted and shy.  Aron reframes HSP behavior as a response to overstimulation.  Everyone has an optimal level of arousal, and because HSPs are aroused more by smaller stimuli, which are abundant and can even include our own emotional responses to experiences, they are more easily aroused more than is optimum for them.  Everyone withdraws (is shy) when faced with too much arousal, and everyone needs time to quietly process (introversion).

Let me give you an example from my own life.  When I was a young child, I was very emotional.  I was easily overwhelmed, to the point of losing self-control, by my own emotions and the experiences that triggered them.  When I was in fifth grade, I found a model for managing it: Mr. Spock of Star Trek.  He was person (or Vulcan or half-Vulcan) with intense emotions that used various practices of logical thinking, meditation, art and study to discipline himself and control his own behavior.  Yes, at that age it meant repressing my emotions and withdrawing from others to some degree.  I gained a sense of self-control and space to think.  It was a little patch of high ground above the flood.  As a kid on the verge of puberty, it was precious to me.

That challenge hasn’t diminished as an adult.  How can I enjoy the sensory and emotional richness I can experience without being carried away by it?  How can I take notice of the little things that make me pause without getting jumpy?  How can I pursue the challenging and meaningful work that attracts me without being exhausted by distractions and the social demands organizations?  These are questions all HSPs must answer.

Aron doesn’t always give a simple answer, but she does show readers how to find the answers for themselves.  Relationships and work present all manner of highly arousing situations that can drain an HSP.  Aron provides information on how to approach these challenges in ways that acknowledge your trait of high sensitivity, with its weakness and the many strengths that can be brought to bear on the problem.

These problems can be exacerbated for HSPs who had rough childhoods, which is all too common.  (I’m fortunate that I had accepting and tolerant parents.  I suspect there are several HSPs scattered in my extended family, which fits with high sensitivity generally being inherited.)  Therapy can be very helpful for HSPs who need to deal with these issues.  Aron provides recommendations on what kind of therapies may be most useful to HSPs.

I suspect most of the readers of this book will be HSPs.  If you’re not an HSP, you probably know one.  If you think your spouse, close friend, or employee is an HSP, it may be worthwhile to read this book.  HSPs have a lot of strengths they would happily bring to your relationship or business if they are given the opportunity and a little quiet space in which to thrive.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Quiet by Susan Cain

Aron, Elaine N.  The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You.  1996.  New York: Broadway, 1998.

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Timeless Healing by Herbert Benson with Marg Stark

Herbert Benson, M.D., is known for discovering the relaxation response. This is a natural, restorative state of the body that can be elicited with practices similar to meditation. Though the relaxation response is discussed in this book, it is not the focus.

Timeless Healing is about the power of the mind, especially the power of belief, to cause or accelerate healing. Benson specifically refers to the well-documented placebo effect, which he refers to as “remembered wellness.” Remembered wellness is a phenomena distinct from the relaxation response, though both can be useful.

Benson summarizes the results of several studies related to remembered wellness. Patient beliefs, caregiver beliefs, and positive patient-caregiver relationships have significant, large effects on healing and the effectiveness of medical treatment. The body affects the brain and the brain powerfully effects the body; they are intimately linked and there is no body-mind dichotomy.

This connection between body and mind was recognized in historic medicine. Because the processes of the body were not understood, ancient physicians relied heavily on remembered wellness. As scientific knowledge increased, medical practitioners became reluctant to acknowledge the effect of remembered wellness, instead preferring the newfound power of science.

That very science had to account for remembered wellness. The placebo effect in powerful.  Traditionally, placebos were thought to be about 30 percent effective; studies conducted by Benson and his associates showed them to be 70 to 90 percent effective. Instead of dismissing the placebo effect as an oddity, Benson advocates recognizing and using remembered wellness in medical practice, patient care, and especially self-care.

Another element of belief that affects health is faith. We seem to be wired to believe in God (or something greater or an ultimate power).  Benson sites studies that show that regardless of the particulars, religious beliefs and observances contribute to healing. He refers to the combination of remembered wellness, the relaxation response and belief as the “Faith Factor.”

Mind-body medicine has gained popularity in the 17 years since Timeless Healing was published, but the overall medical system has not changed a lot, in spite of the constant talk about and changes to medical policy. There is still relevance to Benson’s chapter on incorporating remembered wellness into the medical system, and the billions that could be saved by helping people heal themselves of the mostly stress-related symptoms that drive them to physicians. The book also has a chapter on how an individual can incorporate remembered wellness into his self-care and his relationship with his physician and medical care.

Some strategies for self-care using remembered wellness include

-challenging negative automatic thoughts,

-using visualization and affirmations (especially combined with eliciting the relaxation response),

-focusing on helping others,

-letting go of worries (and stopping obsessing over health and all the medical news),

-recognizing the healing power within yourself while wisely recognizing the need for medical care,

-finding trustworthy guides and advisors

-trusting your instincts and recognize the value of your emotions as well as analytical facts, and

-letting your faith, religion, or belief in God be part of your healing.

There is also a note of warning in the book. The placebo effect can also produce negative results, or a “nocebo” effect. Our beliefs can cause illness and negate the effectiveness of medication. Negative beliefs, stress and worry are bad for your health.

Herbert Benson also wrote The Relaxation Response.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

Benson, Herbert, with Marg Stark. Timeless Healing: The Power of Biology and Belief. New York: Scribner, 1996.

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Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Ambrose, Stephen E. Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West. 1996. New York: Touchstone, 1997.

Undaunted Courage is a biography of Meriwether Lewis. It is also, to a large extent, an account of Lewis’ expedition, co-led by William Clark, up the Missouri River, across the Rocky Mountains, down the Columbia River to the Pacific Coast and back again.


The Lewis and Clark expedition, the bicentennial of which was celebrated in 2004 through 2006, is rightly presented as the centerpiece of Lewis’ life. Ambrose shows how Lewis’ early life in the plantations and wilderness of Virginia, as a militia officer during the Whiskey Rebellion and under the political tutelage of Thomas Jefferson uniquely prepared Lewis to lead a company of explorer-soldiers with a broad mission. His life after the expedition was brief and troubled.

The western exploration, beginning in 1804 and ending in 1806, is the major focus of the narrative. It was more than simply a trip. Lewis and Clark were charged with scientific observation (particularly geography, botany and zoology), Indian diplomacy, establishing trade, and what might be considered a touch of espionage. With the exception of Indian policy, Lewis, Clark and their men performed admirably.

Lewis, throughout the mission and afterward, wanted to make it clear that he and Clark had equal parts in the leadership of the expedition. It is extraordinary that this worked so well. One gets the impression for the book that Lewis was the senior of these equals, which may explain it. Even so, Lewis seemed to prefer the close companionship of trusted peers and friends.

Lewis achieved great success while still relatively young, in his early thirties. Early success can be tough, but Lewis seems like a man who can handle tough situations. However, his few years of life after the expedition seem to be characterized by failure. Certainly, the political situation in the Louisiana Territory, where Lewis was appointed governor, was very difficult, and he may not have been cut out to be a politician and bureaucrat. However, he left important matters that were easily within his grasp undone. Notably, he never published the expedition journals, which more than anything else may have sealed his fame, supported his policies and multiplied the fruit of his exceptional labor.

The final years of Lewis’ life, which ended in suicide, raises many unanswered, and possibly unanswerable, questions. Even so, Ambrose’s biography of the man is an interesting story, and sometime and exciting tale of his great adventure.

The Pinball Effect by James Burke

I originally posted this review at Infrastructure Watch, where I write about civil infrastructure, the environment and other matters of technology.

Burke, James. The Pinball Effect: How Renaissance Water Gardens Make the Carburetor Possible—and Other Journeys Through Knowledge. Boston: Little, Brown, 1996.

Reading The Pinball Effect may leave you feeling like a pinball, bouncing from one thing to another quickly. In places, it’s like a bee, tasting many flowers, but never lingering on one.

Burke is more interested in the links between ideas, innovations and inventions. He touches on many of the important technologies, science, events and movements from a broad section of history, but his subject is the more elusive connections between them.

To Burke, all knowledge is linked, so it doesn’t matter where you start. He starts with hairdressing, which leads to improvements in cruise ships. Before the journey is through, he touches on steam power, the major scientific breakthroughs of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, several political and religious movements of that time, Robin Hood, fairy tales and the telephone. That is just a fraction of the nodes on Burke’s web of knowledge.

Burke further indicates the web-like linkages between ideas by including “gateways” in his book. These marginal notations serve as a print version of a hyperlink. The book bounces around plenty if you read it straight through, so the gateways amount to a gimmick. I wasn’t tempted to read the book in any more than one of the 447 ways made possible by the gateways. If you’d like to flip back to a previous, related section, the gateways will save you a trip to the index.

The book is interesting, especially as a quick survey of the ideas that have shaped our history, especially our science and technology. It is also disorienting. Burke tries to capture the strings on the web of knowledge, the links between ideas, but it seems the one can only really see the nodes, the particular events of history and inventions. It is something like connect-the dots. Burke can show us many dots, and he does, and indicate that they are connected by leaping from one to the next, usually sensibly, but to some degree, it is still up to the reader to draw the connections.

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The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis

Lewis, C. S. The Great Divorce. 1946. New York: Touchstone, 1996.

The Great Divorce is a fantasy; it’s an imagined trip from hell to heaven. Lewis is careful to describe it as a fantasy and a dream. He doesn’t claim to have had a vision, or a revelation, or to have actually traveled their. The dreamland setting of this little book isn’t even strictly heaven or hell, but a land in the twilight of the impending final judgment, what he calls the “Valley of the Shadow of Life.” While his speculation on heaven and hell are interesting, they are the smaller part of what he explores in this story.

In the preface, Lewis acknowledges a science fiction story as the source of the idea that things and people of heaven are super-solid and that hell and its residents are insubstantial. Those who love and desire God before everything else gain everything, because it is the ultimately reality and the source of all. Those who long for anything more than God end up with nothing but their regrets. As he puts it, “Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.”

As he explores the foothills of heaven (Lewis imagine George McDonald as his guide), he sees other residents of hell (like himself who he sees as ghosts) interacting with the angels and saints (bright, solid people) who reside in heaven. The heavenly woo the ghostly visitors with the joy of God. Most of the visitors choose something else, if it brings them misery. They want what they want at any cost, more than they want God even though he contains all they could truly desire.

This second element is the heart of the book. What the narrator learns and observes is mostly about the choice we face, and how we make it, and a little about the nature of heaven and hell. “What concerns you,” explains the imagined McDonald, “is the nature of the choice itself: and that ye can watch them making.”