June 27, 2014

June 27, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

It happens again and again that this writer hears what other people have been going through is exactly the same as what he went through. This uniformity should be expected from the science called Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). 

A person is believed to have achieved literacy when he or she has mastered four different behaviors, which are learned separately: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Listening and speaking must be joined for this person to become fully verbal. What this means is that listening and speaking happen at the same rate and intensity level, rather than that they occur separately, on different occasions. In SVB, speakers listen while they speak. Also, reading and writing are ideally joined; the writer reads his or her writing while he or she is writing, rather than reading after he or she has written or before he or she has started writing. 

The notion that something entirely new can be said, when a speaker listens to him or herself, while he or she speaks, originates in a stimulus control which was not operating when we didn’t listen to ourselves while we speak. Therefore, what we say is a function of how we sound. Novelty of public speech is a function of listening while we speak. Listening occurring privately, before or after we have spoken, leads to communication problems in both our public and private speech. 

In SVB public speech, because the speaker listens to him or herself while he or she speaks, he or she experiences SVB private speech, which only occurs during SVB public speech. Since SVB private speech is a continuation of the positive emotions expressed during SVB public speech, we are happy with ourselves and each other during SVB. However, this happiness doesn’t necessarily result in positive private speech, it may also results in the total absence of private speech, in silence. After SVB public speech has occurred, there may be an absence of private speech. After the accurate expression of our thoughts and feelings in SVB we become quiet. 

In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which the speaker listens to himself before or after he or she has spoken and not while he or she is speaking, public speech sets the stage for negative private speech.  Moreover, public speech is no longer a function of his or her environment, but it is a function of what this person is saying to him or herself privately. Although the negative emotions of NVB private speech were learned or conditioned in a negative NVB public speech environment, the NVB speaker’s public speech is now determined by his or her NVB private speech.  Stated differently, the NVB speaker is out of touch with his or her environment.

In SVB, by contrast, public speech is always function of the environment or, more accurately, of other people. During NVB, a person’s negative private speech doesn't  abate and therefore keeps setting the stage for NVB public speech. In NVB we can neither have peace with each nor can we have peace with ourselves.  The idea that we should try to change ourselves is the same as the idea that we should try to change others. However, we only keep thinking that we need to change ourselves or each other as long as we don’t view SVB as well as NVB as behaviors which are a function of our environment. There is no inner agent who causes our behavior!

We never individually produce English, Dutch, or Chinese, but we are part of a verbal community. Likewise, SVB and NVB are not behaviors we individually chose, but something we always do together. 

This writer, who in this writing experiences and enjoys the joining of his writing with his reading, realizes that most of what has been written is the product of NVB. NVB reflects the incessant negative private speech of authors, who wanted to be speakers, who wanted to be listened to and understood, who longed for SVB, but who didn’t know how to have it. Like everyone else, this writer, based on his being conditioned by NVB, was also once convinced that expressing his negative private speech into public was the most important thing to do. He did this in an attempt to rid himself of his negative emotions, but it never worked.

In SVB there is nothing to get rid of. The absence of aversive stimulation creates an environment in which we can communicate like we have never done before.  The only thing that works is the environment in which SVB is possible. 

When we don’t have any back problems, we don’t feel our back, but when we sprain a muscle, we feel our back all the time. In good health, we aren't even aware that our back is fine. Similarly, our private speech is only about things that we need to watch out for and be careful about. Said differently, private speech is basically always negative. It warns us for the negative stimuli outside of our skin, in our environment, which we need to avoid. Why would we want to have back problems? We must be careful when lifting things and be mindful about how much we can carry. If we try to lift too much weight, we will ruin our backs. NVB weighs us down, because of our over-involvement with the negative stimuli in our environment. Oddly, in NVB, we approach instead of avoid such stimuli. Indeed, in NVB, we are getting on each other’s back. Due to NVB people seem to have lost their backbone.  In NVB, we try to carry the weight of the world or we throw our weight around.

In SVB, by contrast, we have each other’s back. In SVB, we back up and we find that our verbal expressions are always embedded in our nonverbal experiences. In SVB, we back out of meaningless, NVB argumentation. In SVB we come back to our senses, because we embody our language. Coming back to our senses means we perceive safe environments as safe, we avoid and know how to avoid unsafe environments. In SVB, we get back to how we as individual organisms experience our environment. In SVB, by following the sound of our own voice, we follow the way back to our own well-being. In SVB, we become aware of circumstances that once existed, way back, in which we were happy and content. 

After SVB, there is nothing to hang on to anymore, not even our positive self-talk. After SVB, conflicts about who we believe to be completely dissolve, because SVB makes us one and allows us to experience unity while we speak. We go through many similar experiences and these experiences are expressed appropriately. SVB doesn’t lead to positive self-talk, but to absence of self-talk, because there is no self.  This however doesn’t mean that we are unconscious. To the contrary, due to SVB we are conscious and due to NVB we are unconscious and mechanical.