December 25, 2015

December 25, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my ninth response to “The Personal Life of the Behavioral Analyst” by D. Bostow (2011). I am a social engineer and I work as a psychology instructor at the local community college. I don’t like to talk about environment in the usual way. I consider you as my environment and I know that I am also your environment. When we speak, we either co-regulate each other or we dis-regulate each other. In the former, we engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in the latter we engage in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). In the former, we care about the environment, but in the latter, we disconnect from ourselves as well as from our external environment, from other communicators.

Few people know that part of the environment to which they only individually have excess: the environment that is below our own skin. One has to be a radical behaviorist to consider what is beneath our own shin is part of the environment. Yet, even most behaviorists are mainly busy with what is outside of their own skin. All of this will change once you engage more often in SVB.

Due to repeated involvement in SVB you will be able to perceive the environment within and outside your skin as one. This oneness has many positive consequences. For one, it dissolves any kind of conflict which was a consequence of the imaginary separation between you and your environment. Your so-called expulsion from paradise was due NVB and your reunification will be due to SVB.

These are not hypothetical words, but instructions to listen to yourself while you speak and to attain SVB. In SVB the speaker and the listener are always experienced as one. Recovering “the beautiful and abundant life” is not a matter of “challenging our accustomed reinforcers.” To the contrary, when we engage in SVB, we will be able to identify many new reinforcers that were not  available to us during NVB. Moreover, once we know the difference between SVB and NVB, we want SVB. We no longer want NVB as we have we have found something which is much more reinforcing.

There will be no “disruption of behavior” and “change to different patterns of behavior” will not be difficult. Such aversive predictions arise from NVB, but do not occur during SVB. It is impossible, however, to have approximation of SVB. One either has it or one doesn’t. In other words, the amount of instances of SVB that one experiences will either increase or decrease due to the circumstances one is in. Like waking up each morning, each instance of SVB is an event in and of itself.