December 27, 2015

December 27, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my eleventh response to “The Personal Life of the Behavioral Analyst” by D. Bostow (2011). It is remarkable how writing only one page a day in my journal has such a reinforcing effect on me. Not too long ago, I wrote entries of seven pages long each day, but now I like to keep it short and simple. It stimulates me to write even more as I have worked days ahead. 

If, for whatever reason (having the flu), I don’t feel like writing, I still have daily entries in my journal. I like to keep that continuity going and never believed I would be able to accomplish this by writing. “To change our behavior, we change the contingencies, but the ‘‘we’’ who are to do the changing are not originating agents (Baum, 1995; Skinner, 1971).” 

Since I am happy with my wife Bonnie, since I am so successful as a teacher, since I feel so acknowledged and stimulated by my two dear, PhD-educated, behaviorist friends, I feel less and less like I have to prove myself about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). The contingency has changed and now I confidently can write about what I know and enjoy. 

I think it is a good sign my dear student that I completely forget that I am writing for you. I am happy with the level of comfort which has come into my writing. It couldn’t be this way as long as my private speech was about my need for approval and the negative emotions I felt because of rejection. Due to SVB I have developed new controlling repertoires, such as this writing, which increased the probability of effective actions. 

Of course, “these repertories are created, maintained, and altered by others in our culture (Skinner, 1953). The individual does not ‘‘act on his own’’ in his personal life for long without supporting contingencies from others.” Because I now share SVB, in both spoken and written form, others reinforce and stimulate me to perfect my teaching. SVB feels to me as if I am playing my flute and I want to play as best as I can for others.

In SVB it is all about the connection between the speaker and the listener. NVB, on the other hand, creates and maintains a separation between the speaker and the listener. However, the NVB speaker is not NOT-listening to him or herself while he or she speaks, because he or she can’t listen to him or herself, but, because he or she is not stimulated by others. Once we are stimulated to listen to ourselves while we speak, we are often surprised that nobody has ever stimulated us like this before.