November 17, 2015

November 17, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

I no longer feel like specifically addressing my writing to my students. I thought that as they are the ones I talk with most of the time that it would be useful to direct my attention to them, but by doing so I find my writing become narrowed down to a level which is not that interesting to me anymore. Although many students write wonderful things in their papers, they are for the most part not really interested in behaviorism. This is  understandable since they haven’t been exposed to it and it is not my role to do this. I am assigned to teach the Principles of Psychology and behaviorism is only one of the many theoretical perspectives covered in the book we use. I cannot insist too much on behaviorism as that would make me come across as against these other approaches, which, of course, I am. By changing my audience again to only those who want to talk with me and have at least some preliminary interest in behaviorism, I do myself a big favor. I hesitate to write this for fear of losing my job.

Although most behaviorists are not responding, I find it still more interesting to direct my attention to them, as a few of them have responded positively. I am not going for quantity, but for quality. However, I am also addressing a population, who, due to their behavioral history, is ready to be taught, by me, in my extension of behaviorism: the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)/ Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction. I am teaching a new phenomenon which only very few people are already somewhat aware of. My joy is in addressing them and that is all that matters.  

Since most people, due to their previous conditioning, are not into SVB, I am not interested anymore in their NVB. It is more of the same old nonsense and I am not going to pretend as if there is anything good about it. To me NVB is something to be avoided. For a long time, I have tried in vain to change people, but this has only caused me trouble. Of course, for a long time, I myself didn’t know anything at all about behaviorism and in retrospect that was the biggest part of my problem. Now that I have acquired scientific understanding of behavior, I am not as emotionally attached as I used to be. This is a tremendous relief. I still at times am surprised I am no longer troubled by leaving people behind who are incapable of having SVB with me.