January 7, 2016

January 7, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

A dear friend of mine in the Netherlands described writing as slow speaking and reading as an even slower kind of listening. The writer can endlessly rewrite what he or she is saying until he or she has found the best way to state his or her case. The reader, on the other hand, can reread what he or she is reading until he or she has fully grasped what the writer is saying. I follow his advice to keep perfecting my writing and I am grateful that his teaching is having this beneficial effect on me. He has this effect on me as I accept him as my teacher. I accept him because we have mainly Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) together. 

Someone who comments on my writing, but who doesn’t engage in SVB with me, can’t have this effect on me. I am informing you about this because I think it is important for you to know that I am learning to write like this because of SVB. This writing is not what you usually read. Reading this writing gets even better when you read it out loud, because then your sound will be able to resonate with these words.  

One of my students wrote in a paper that SVB had made her aware of the surprising fact that she preferred to speak much slower than she normally did. She described herself as someone who always has her heart on her sleeve. She explained, however, that she really would like others to know what she is thinking and she would also like to know what others are thinking. Because of listening to herself she slowed down how she talked and she discovered that speaking less intensely created a sense of calmness, which made her speech more effective. She described the same process I went through as I discovered SVB.