January 16, 2014

January 16, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is a different language than Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It is useful to view it as another language, because this gives us a better sense of what is needed to make it possible. We know NVB, our native language, through and through. NVB is the language we are used to. SVB, on the other hand, is like learning a second language. One language isn’t better than the other and SVB isn’t better than NVB. However, the tendency is to think that SVB is better than NVB, but this is because we are familiar with NVB.

Our emotional bond is stronger with our mother tongue. Looked at from SVB, that is, from a novel verbal community, we develop and become more rational, by moving away from our emotional attachments.  Yet, SVB doesn’t claim to be better than NVB, it just is different. The difference is commonly referred to as the difference between being emotional or being rational. This distinction can often not be made because we are unfamiliar with the SVB/NVB distinction. In NVB we pretend to be rational when we are emotional. There are multiple verbal communities we can become part of, but whether that is going to happen depends on our ability to move away from NVB. 

Learning a new language is easier while living among those who speak it, but here comes the problem: SVB isn’t known and there is no place where it is spoken. SVB is a new language. Its newness is experienced as in learning a second language. It is hard to believe we don’t know it, because we are so familiar with its verbal aspects, but we don’t know the nonverbal portion of it. Yet, we did experience instances of SVB. They occurred in spite of our struggle, our verbal fixation and outward orientation. SVB isn’t accidental, but deliberate. Once we know it, we can replicate those instances in which it happened. 

It isn’t possible for us yet to replicate SVB, because we didn’t know what was needed to make it happen. All we remember is that we were feeling well, that we were having fun, that it was easy, and that there was positive energy. Since we have been deprived of SVB and since we would like to think of ourselves as already capable of it, we attributed the SVB which we experienced, to either ourselves or to the people, who were part of it, who made it happen. In each case, we attributed SVB to internal values held by ourselves or by others. 

Supposedly, someone was smart, friendly or patient, or someone else was mean, deceitful or crazy.  What was missing from this picture is that we can only be that way if circumstances permit it. In other words, nobody really is what they believe they are. They can only be that way in a certain situation. Indeed, our much-overrated sense of autonomy depends on our environment. In societies in which this isn’t reinforced different behaviors are observed. This fact about human behavior also holds for schizophrenics. They too only believe and have been made to believe that they are mentally ill, but as anyone who works with them and observes them closely knows, mental illness is only present under certain circumstances, but absent under other circumstances. Once we have SVB this behaviorist knowledge will dissolve ways of thinking which prevented us from understanding that we are determined by environments, by other human beings. 

We consider storms and rains as environmental events. We may think of our cities, neighborhoods and homes as environments in which we live, but we don’t usually consider human beings as our environment. And, even more less likely, do we consider the environment within our own skin, to which only we have access. We are so environmentally unfriendly because we are so disconnected from each other and from ourselves that we don’t even see this.  

The spoken communication in which our verbal and nonverbal expressions can become and can remain aligned is a communication in which emphasis is placed on our nonverbal expression, on how we sound. This nonverbal focus brings attention to the experience which we have while we speak. In SVB we experience joy. This joy is known by the way that our body responds. If we can’t feel it, it simply isn’t there. Nobody of the thousands of people with whom this author has experimented wasn’t able to experience the joy of SVB. There is hope for everyone, even for the most traumatized, stubborn, aggressive, psychotic, suicidal, dissociated and fanatic among us. SVB has affected everyone who came in contact with it and it will continue to do so.

The nonverbal, as indicated by this author, relates to what is not articulated in language, but in sound, facial expression, gestures, and movements. This author focuses on sound, because the human voice played a prominent role in his behavioral history. Years of classical singing and listening to his voice created an awareness of his sound which couldn’t have happened in any other way. It is due to this background that the author was inclined to listen more closely to his speaking voice. He found that self-listening had an immediate effect which was caused by the way in which he sounded. He couldn’t at first believe that something so simple could have such big effect.He calmly spoke with himself for hours and was able to say what he had wanted to say. Words kept coming and he listened to what he had to say to himself. There was no preference for any particular aspect of himself because he was listening to how he sounded. When he sounded good, his speech was orderly and coherent, but when he no longer liked his own sound, his thoughts and feelings became chaotic and fragmented. When he produced coherent words again, he sounded good again.