October 27, 2015

October 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

                                                                                                                                          

Dear Reader, 

How are you doing? How do you sound when you say that? If it doesn’t sound good to you, how do you think others must be experiencing your voice? If you don’t like the way you sound, others most likely don’t like it either. You may not have noticed this, but there is agreement on how we sound. We may disagree about what we say, about the content of our conversation, but we agree on how we sound. I became aware of this many years ago because I had been studying classical singing. Since I was trying to make a beautiful sound with my songs, I was listening to my voice. However, at some point, I didn’t want to sing anymore. There was something more important I wanted to do, but I didn’t know at the time what it was. I had to give up singing to allow myself to discover it. 

Those were difficult times as singing was very reinforcing to me. It felt like an enormous loss. It was then that I began to listen to myself while I speak. My singing was replaced by speaking as I found that listening to myself while speaking was even more reinforcing to me than singing. Moreover, in my conversations with others it became clear that they were also intrigued with the process of listening to their own voice while they speak. The wonderful conversations which became possible due to this simple mechanism revealed a solution to many problems. 

Each time I engaged in this novel way of talking, others confirmed that it is indeed something intriguing, alive, real and valuable and because of that I dedicated my life to exploring its workings. I set myself the goal to collect data to scientifically prove the existence of this phenomenon.

Short after immigrating to the United States I went back to school and decided to study psychology. I got an Associate Degree (AA Degree) in Social and Behavioral Sciences, a Bachelor’s Degree (BA Degree) in Psychology and a Masters of Art (MA Degree) in Psychology. However, when I wanted to do my internship to become a Doctor of Psychology (PsyD), I found out that the institution from which I took my education was not accredited and that no organizations in my area would take me as an intern. Then I decided to get a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) with an accredited institution. I first got my Master of Science (MS Degree) and then set out to achieve my PhD. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish this because of stress, illness, death of a family member and financial burden. 

I was a PhD candidate, had completed all my course work and was writing my dissertation on attachment styles and unresolved loss. Since there was no support at all for me at my university, I withdrew in 2012. My wife and I moved away from our expensive Mountain View apartment and went back to Chico. Our return was a blessing. As I was out of the program, I stumbled on Walden Two by B.F. Skinner and began studying behaviorist literature. I discovered that although I had taken a course in applied behavior analysis, I hadn’t learned anything about the Science of Human Behavior during my years of study. I realized that radical behaviorism explains the process of listening to ourselves while we speak. I have read many books and papers by behaviorists and tried to contact them to talk about what I now call Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). I have two behaviorist friends, one in Holland and one in Columbia, who have acknowledged that my approach to human interaction is explained by behaviorism. My Dutch friend, who knows how I teach my psychology classes, calls me a behavioral engineer. 

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Since a couple of years I have been an Associate Faculty in Psychology and at the local college. This teaching is a great application of SVB as I can work with groups of students for the duration of an entire semester. Never before was there a situation in which I was able to work with groups so consistently and for such a long time. I love teaching as it allows me to shape the behaviors of the students in my class. Their feedback signifies the results of my efforts and their papers are a joy to read as they report on the discoveries they make due to their explorations of SVB. 

I just started a blog, but I don’t think there is enough feedback to remain interested. This writing, on the other hand, gives me more satisfaction as it is ready to be read, understood and put into practice. I like to write this as it generates positive self-talk in me. My writing is a form of positive public speech which generates positive private speech. That our private speech is a function of public speech only becomes apparent in SVB. The only reason we don’t know about this is because we are usually trapped by what I call Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). And, NVB overt speech causes our NVB covert speech. In NVB we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak, but we want others to listen to us or we are straining ourselves to listen to others. Either way, we are outward oriented and remain busy with others. 

In NVB the speaker and the listener are experienced as separate and NVB keeps separating the speaker from the listener. In SVB, however, the speaker and the listener become and remain connected. In SVB there is a sense of oneness and that is why it is so effective. SVB is possible as we pay attention to how we sound while we speak. In other words, in SVB we become and remain attuned to the sound which represents our own well-being. When others hear our SVB, they respond by producing it too.