January 2, 2014

January 2, 2014 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

I keep being amazed during my explorations which today lead me to find this particular letter type, which I appreciate so much. I would like to be able to write with pen exactly like this. While deciding the fond, it occurred to me that the letter seize I prefer approximates the letter seize which I would produce when I would write with a pen. The elegance of these letters pleases me and has such a different effect on me than the bold letters I used yesterday. Now that I know this letter type, I will use it more often. It surprises me that I have possessed this computer for so long and yet I never experimented by using a different letter type. I highly recommend this to the reader. 

This finding is another little miracle in my life which indicates that things are getting better and better. Why would I want to write with yesterday’s letter type when this letter type is available to me now? I don’t think I will. I never associated my letter type with my speech. In my occasional handwritten letters to my friends in the Netherlands,, the relief I experienced had nothing to do with the fact that it was hand written, but that I wrote with a letter type  I liked.

The fact that this laptop computer can produce the hand written letters better than I could write them is another improvement I get to enjoy. I feel so fortunate to be able to write like this and I think this is going to improve the consistency of my hand writing too. Although it has taken a long time, I feel benefit of technology and proud to have discovered this possibility. This letter type is called Kunstler Script and it makes me feel like an artist. For all these years I have written with only just one letter type called Times New Roman. 

Just to give the reader a sense of how different that letter type and the tone of that writing is, here are a couple of words : New Times Roman with the same fond looks like this. It seems to me that I am raising my voice, and screaming. This is an astounding discovery because it goes against everything I stand for.

I was using this letter type because I was asked to use it while writing my papers at the university where I studied psychology. I am baffled by the enormous effect this has and I am aware of the connection which wasn’t there before and which I now know, couldn’t be there. I have said about Sound Verbal Behavior SVB) :   the sound of our voice determines whether or not we communicate. 

If my use of letter type affected me, it must have affected others as well. It is almost embarrassing to recognize that I have been screaming for so long but didn’t even know it. I was just saying that I appreciate technology, but technology also has prevented me from recognizing that I lost my own sound. Of course, this is also true for others. Most people send messages in the same letter type not realizing at all how this effects them. I get an email or read something printed in a different letter type occasionally, but it bothers me because I am not used to it. That the uniqueness of our sound of our verbal behavior can be lost without knowing it is an aspect of SVB which is often brought up by those who experiment with it for the first time. This loss occurs because we write and read instead of speak and listen. 

As  most people do more reading than writing, they do more listening than speaking. To hear one’s voice one must speak and to recognize one’s letter type, one must write. Due to writing this writer was able to finally recognize that his letter type didn’t and couldn’t match his speech. We can’t say what we think or feel as long as we speak with a sound which doesn’t resonate with the relaxation of our body. The dissociation that is caused by writing is created by the letter type we use.