December 26, 2014

December 26, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

This writer promotes a new way of communicating, called Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). This new way of communicating will wean us off from our Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), which, with its explanatory reliance on superstitions, dominates and undermines all human discourse and makes productive and peaceful relationship impossible. SVB is the a product of the scientific maturity of this writer. Those mature enough to be willing to verify the validity of SVB, will, like this author, be liberated from the many explanatory fictions regarding behavior.

Many people have made similar claims, but it will soon become clear to the reader that SVB, the effective control of the environment by means of spoken communication, is not like anything we have already heard about.  This author agrees with behaviorologist Lawrence E. Fraley, who writes “the extent and the effectiveness of that control depends on intervening accurately and precisely in ongoing natural functions ” (Fraley, 2005).  In his paper “On Verbal Behavior: The Fourth of Four Parts”, which is mostly about the private speech of the verbalizer, the part Skinner used to refer to as “occurring within the skin” (1957), Fraley unknowingly provides evidence for why and how SVB works.  

During SVB, the verbalizer uses a unique organism-specific tone of voice, which, on many previous occasions has been identified and validated, by the mediator and the verbalizer, as the sound, which the verbalizer only produces when he or she experiences his or her well-being. Moreover, in SVB, we reciprocate, accelerate and refine this enjoyable vibration, which carries from one organism to another, and which, due to turn-taking and fine-tuning guides us into increased levels of health and happiness. 

Of course, we have already had SVB, but we are incapable of reliably creating and maintaining it, because we rely on explanations about why we communicate the way we do, which are patently false. The illusion that we ourselves decide how we communicate is why we continue to have NVB and can’t have SVB. Only when we begin to recognize that we influence each other and are influenced by each other, because, we are, whether we acknowledge it or not, each other’s environment, can we begin to have an accurate account of what is actually happening in spoken communication.  Spoken communication is a bi-directional process, which breaks down the moment it becomes a uni-directional process. Stated differently, we can and we will have SVB, because we maintain it together, or more precisely, we can only continue with SVB, if we know how to continue it.

The inaccurate, pre-scientific account of verbal behavior (as well as the accurate, scientific account) did not and could not come about due to “the verbalizer’s personal initiative”, but is created and maintained by how we talk, together. The notion that individuals should be capable of behaving verbally alone is as wrong for NVB, which perpetuates the old belief in a behavior-managing self, as for SVB, which educates us about the naturally occurring processes, such a respondent and operant conditioning. 


In spite of our advanced understanding of human behavior, nobody is yet capable of reliably producing SVB. This blog intends to change that. This author is a behavioral engineer, who designs environments in which SVB can and will occur. His behavioral history has prepared him for this task. Although he grew up with a lot of punishment, rejection and abandonment, his involvement in acting, singing, poetry and spirituality slowly revealed his interested in spoken communication. His longing for and frustration with how people talked with him led him to study psychology. This in turn got him interested in the science of human behavior, which validated his distinction between SVB and NVB. With his discovery of behaviorism in 2012, he had found the scientific framework he had been looking for.