June 12, 2014

June 12, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

It is detrimental to say whatever comes to your mind. When a person does this, it indicates that his or her listening is less developed than his or her speaking. If a person shoots first and asks questions later, he or she is obviously not very concerned about how he or she is received. However, what is easily missed about such a person is that he or she doesn’t and can’t receive him or herself. 

The opposite of the afore-mentioned is someone who always thinks first and only then speaks. Supposedly, such a person is more thoughtful and more capable of accurately predicting the consequences of what he or she is saying. However, there are problems involved with that as well. Someone who constantly edits what he or she says does only one of two things: either he or she comments with his or her private speech on his or her public speech or, he or she comments with his or her public speech on his or her private speech. In the former, what this person says publicly is a function of what he or she says to him or herself privately. The private speech is out of sight and is carefully camouflaged to hide his or her self-serving motives. When, by contrast, before one speaks, a person’s public speech comments on his or her private speech, a different way of talking ensues. In the former, we become more anti-social and aggressive, while in the latter, we become more social and peaceful.  Only when private speech is a function of public speech will private speech make us more considerate. 

Nevertheless, the person who blurts out whatever comes to their mind is still more social than someone whose public speech is function of their private speech. The fact that their ability to recognize how they are perceived by others is impaired and prevents them from accurately perceiving themselves, makes them, in the worst case scenario, an annoying nuisance, but they are mostly hurting themselves.  

The person who is perceived by others as most disturbing, who says things and only later perhaps realizes what he or she has gotten him or herself into, gets socially rejected. This causes him or her to have negative private speech, which in turn comes out again as public speech. It is important to consider that this so-called extrovert, manic loud-mouth, has private speech, which is a function of public speech and can be corrected by public speech, but the so-called introvert,  cold-blooded, calculated anti-social, is more pathological, because his or her public speech appears to be a function of his or her private speech. Moreover, treatment of such a person with public speech is less effective, because it will be more difficult to focus on the real issue: the uneven development of speaking and listening. When speaking is more developed than listening this changes the direction of the communication. 

With a relative even development of speaking and listening, speaking will be a function of listening. In other words, it makes no sense to say something if nobody is listening. However, the more speaking is forced on us and the more listening is lacking, the less speaking will be a function of listening, and the more listening will be a function of speaking. This change of direction always involves a different kind of speaking and listening that is: coercive speaking and forced listening. When our private speech is a function of public speech this causes bi-directional interaction, but when public speech is a function of private speech, this creates uni-directional, my-way-or-the-highway speech or Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which shouldn’t even be considered communication.  

Furthermore, when listening is more developed than speaking, a lopsidedness occurs which decreases speech altogether. There is less talk with those who listen more than they speak. This may lead to depression or schizophrenia. The afore-mentioned uni-directional speech pattern is compounded by the fact that private speech is a function of public speech. Only public speech can change our private speech.  Most treatment is erroneously aimed at altering a person’s private speech.