October 1, 2016

October 1, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Anyone anywhere in the world in conversation with another human being can observe there are only two ways in which we talk: Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). There is no need to search for uniformity, for order or for lawful relations among these naturally occurring events. In any conversation there will be speakers who speak with listeners, who then take turns with these speakers or there will be speakers, who speak at listeners, who don’t take turns with these speakers, who are only supposed to do as they are told.

In SVB speakers and listeners experience that they are one, but in NVB, speakers and listeners struggle with one another as they are moving apart. Only if we take a listener’s perspective of the speaker, only if we as listeners observe and evaluate the tone of the speaker’s voice, will we be able to take note of these universal response classes.

We couldn’t be effective in our spoken communication as long as we haven’t identified the homogeneity of these two crucially important vocal verbal patterns. It is not because of NVB that human relationship is deeply troubled, it is because as we don’t recognize the difference between SVB and NVB that we constantly mistake one for the other.

A genuine science of spoken communication has seemed impossible to achieve as we keep mistaking NVB for SVB. However, once we, as listeners, acknowledge these mutually exclusive ways of speaking, we understand why and when, we, as speakers, were either able or unable to speak with these speakers. The SVB/NVB distinction explains why listeners become speakers who speak with or who speak at listeners.

The listener’s experience of our spoken communication will be altered by the SVB/NVB distinction. As listeners we will be able to trust what we hear and no longer deny what we hear. We have experienced a great deal of trouble as we couldn’t be true to what we heard. People make a big deal about being heard by others, but don’t realize the real issue is that we hear ourselves, that we listen to ourselves while we speak.

We listen to ourselves while we speak only in SVB, but not in NVB. In NVB we are not even allowed to listen to ourselves as we are forced to listen to others. This is the reason why there are so many problems in the world; NVB keeps tearing us apart and only SVB can connect us.

The SVB/NVB distinction brings us a new understanding. As we have not viewed our communication and psychological problems from this level of analysis we were unable to solve them. Moreover, as our attempts to solve our problems have failed over and over again, our rates of NVB have increased and our rates of SVB have decreased.

We all know what SVB is when we have it, but we have lost hope in the increase of SVB. All of this is because we assume relations between events which do not exist, which are forcefully imposed on our reality. Rather than learning about and implementing scientific rules, we apply a model of spoken communication that is based on the fiction that each individual is causing his or her own behavior. This model had disastrous consequences and is maintained by our forceful way of talking: NVB.

We cannot contemplate our way out of our communication problems and SVB is the only way in which we can effectively deal with each other as turn-taking speakers and listeners. Predictions rooted in our ignorance about NVB will only create more NVB, while predictions rooted in our experience of and understanding about SVB reliably create more SVB.

Only SVB allows us to prepare ourselves and each other for more SVB. As we know how to set the stage for it, we will achieve more SVB and we will control the conversation which is going to happen in the future. There is nothing magic or idealistic about this, it is beautiful science.