December 15, 2013

December 15, 2013 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

There are people who affect us negatively. No matter how much we try to change this, it will happen again. Our effort to get along with them is a waste of time. They don’t and can’t care about us and we must learn not to get involved with them. Their effect on us must be prevented. We need to avoid them. By ignoring them they lose their influence. Then they will notice this and do something to attract our attention. They always ask, but they can’t give attention. Since they can’t give it, they demand it by pretending to be giving it, to us.

No matter how much attention we give, those who demand it can’t receive it. They only want more as long as we keep giving it to them. They may be more polite or more patient than us, but they trick us into doing things their way. Their tricks, to get our attention, always play into our weakness, which is still there, because, like them, we did not get the attention we needed. Our need for attention makes us vulnerable to those who are good at pretending that they give us their attention. But, by pretending to give attention, they ask our attention.

There is a way of being honest about our need for attention. If there was no such way, there would be no way out. Our lack of attention is very common and the way in which people deal with it leads to all sorts of problems. This writer believes this particularly affects how we talk.  Our lack of attention makes us into unconscious communicators. If we knew the difference between conscious and unconscious conversation,  between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), we would be able to get and make available the attention, which we need and which was missing. 

Based on our history of reinforcement, we choose a profession. We veer toward a profession that is most likely to produce the particular kind of attention which was missing while we grew up. Those who experienced neglect or abandonment are attracted to the mental health professions. There they meet in what can be described as a nightmarish kind of support group, which is really an undermine group. What often goes  unnoticed, is that the patients support the mental health professionals, instead of the other way around. The worst problems are not with those who are diagnosed as mentally ill, but with those, who supposedly help them. We are the only ones who are being helped, because we know how to help ourselves. We have our job and we keep it no matter what.   

Those, who are so good at giving their attention to others, are in the business of taking it. We get paid for giving attention, but what we do in reality is making and keeping the patient sick, because we benefit from that. No matter how much compassion we fake, we reinforce the  problem behavior and our own mental-health-provider-identity. We know how to conduct ourselves in a professional manner and we are at ease with creating and maintaining one-directional interaction with our clients. We make it seem as if interaction is bi-directional, but we are not the least interested in that, because we are the ones who possess the pricy solution for others. We are special and presumably capable.

   

Since what we’ve got is expensive, we believe that it must have value and so we keep producing more NVB. Both the mental health patient and the student of psychology suffer because they think it is worth it and they are getting a good deal. Psychology students long for the moment they will be the ones to decide what is right and wrong. Once they have their license they can have their own practice. Patients buy into what is presented as the recovery model. They believe it will make them better, but requires them act like patients, who let the thinking be done for them by those who come up with these great ideas. They are presumably working towards developing better coping skills, autonomy, confidence and independence, but they don’t achieve this. Like any other obsessive consumers, they never get to the point of real satisfaction with what they have bought. Supply and demand, which turns SVB into something which can be bought and sold, has distorted all human interaction. However, SVB is not a commodity and our mental health can not be improved by NVB.     

December 14, 2013

December 14, 2013

Dear Reader,

Due to the discovery of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the author’s life has changed beyond recognition. The direction of the change has become more and more stable. Confrontation with unwanted stimuli occurs less and less and exposure to stimuli which stabilize and secure his life has increased. Because the learning of effective behavior and the decrease of ineffective behavior is gradual and cumulative, the change occurs almost unnoticed. There are no big changes. The biggest change seems to be when things momentarily go wrong. Then negative stimuli, usually quite suddenly, cause the author to behave in ways, which are reactive. Such behaviors are met with social disqualification. When they occur, the author feels embarrassed it happened so quickly, that he was unable to do anything to prevent them from occurring. Usually this happens under work-related circumstances in which the author is incapable of moving away from stimuli and due to his job must remain in their proximity. He is learning to better handle this. 

Certain stimuli are predictably having an upsetting effect on this author. Such stimuli are best avoided. However, in his work with mentally ill clients this is often impossible. A manic person may be demanding a response, which then has a startle effect. There is no way of escaping this except by looking back afterwards and by thinking about what could have been done differently. The strong feelings that were expressed by this author are always a reaction to the demanding behavior of such clients. Bad and unhealthy behaviors, such as smoking and eating junk-food, are reinforced, so that for them the thought of not being able to behave like that is anxiety provoking. 

Under certain circumstances demanding stimuli are more likely to elicit an upsetting response. When this author was driving the van to transport seven mentally ill clients, some of whom, because they were so excited, were talking very loudly, he was in a stressful situation. The transport took place in the evening, to an event in another town, an hour’s drive away. The laid-back reggae music, which the author appreciated, was suddenly changed by a client to loud and negative noise. And, because the reception kept fading, a coworker, in an attempt to please the clients, kept trying to change the station. She also gave clients turns to listen to their favorite music, if they could find it. Then all of a sudden, one of the clients said “can we smoke?” This author immediately said “No” thinking that the client wanted to lit a cigarette inside the van. The client responded in an intense “Why not?” Thinking that this client was not listening to him and was going to smoke anyway, this author repeated “No, you can’t smoke.” Then the client said in a loud, complaining voice “We are allowed to smoke.” This author reacted “No! You are not going to smoke in the van. I will stop the car if you do.” Only then the client said “I did not ask about smoking in the van, but about having a smoke break before we go to the concert.” People were laughing at this author, who felt bad that he had misjudged the situation and spoken so authoritatively. Another stressor, which could have been avoided, was that the author could have let his coworker drive on the way back. Because she let him know she was not used to driving a big van, this author decided to drive. He put himself in the stressful position to be the driver to the concert and going back home again. Fact was, however, this author didn’t trust his coworker to let her do the driving and so he took responsibility for this important job.Before the trip started, the author had overheard some alarming news about a clients of whom he is life coach. She had been seen crossing the street diagonally, ignoring all traffic, which had to come to a stop. This author thought that when this client endangers herself like that, it is an accident waiting to happen. Also, before the trip started, this author briefly spoke with one of his colleagues, who in his opinion, was very stressed and negative. He was supposed to give him instructions for the trip, but he only handed him a piece of paper. All these events and stimuli had set the stage for this writer's mistake. 

December 13, 2013

December 13, 2013

Dear Reader, 

If it is true that what we believe to be our spoken communication – what this writer calls Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) – is a process which unknowingly takes us further and further away from reality, there is nobody to be blamed for the fact that we can’t attain Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). If there is no standard to base our way of communicating on, we are allowed to do just about anything and still call it communication. How absurd can our communication be? If we move into spoken communication knowingly and deliberately, with the understanding that most of it was simply not working, how can we keep calling it communication? Is must be called something else. We should call it NVB because even though we may behave verbally, we are not communicating. We have to call it noxious, because our way of communicating couldn’t prevent and therefore only created problems. When we take a closer look at how we actually communicate, we find that it has only made things worse. The tragic complications of our human relationships have only increased due how we communicate. 

Our inability to recognize that we have failed in our communication has prevented us from learning how to communicate. Since talking about this continues to be such a challenge, reading about this is not to be taken lightly. To read this in the way it was intended by the author, the reader is asked to consider these written words as spoken word. Then, the reader is the listener. This becomes more evident when the reader reads these words out loud. Although this author provides the words, the reader would provide his or her sounds to these words. As the reader listens to the sound of his or her own voice, he or she understands these words differently from when he or she would not be listening to his or her own voice. In the case of the former, the reader experiences SVB, but in the latter he or she would produce NVB. As the reader becomes the speaker, who listens to himself or herself, while he or she speaks, he or she will add new meaning to these words, which make clear the great difference between SVB and NVB. 

The meaning of our words depends on how we sound. Our lack of attention for how we sound is because we are not used to listen to ourselves. It is not that we can’t, but nothing in our environment stimulates us to do this. We are conditioned to listen to others or to make others listen to us. In both cases self-listening does not occur. 

While listening to others, authority always resides outside of ourselves and our listening behavior is determined by a (NVB) speaker. In SVB, however, it is the other way around: the speaking is and has always been a function of the listener. Due to outward orientation, however, we are not in touch with ourselves and incapable of being in touch with others. In the situation in which the communication is done for us by some professional speaker, who assumes authority, we lose touch with ourselves. Our unresolved issues with authority have perpetuated our NVB. We are only participating in communication once we ourselves become the speaker and do not let others do the talking for us. When others do the talking for us, we are primarily listeners. While we mainly listen to others, read their books, see their movies, vote for their policies and pray for their blessings, we only imagine to be part of the interaction. 

This writer only became a writer because he felt he had something very important to say. His knowledge is understood only if the environment is recreated in which he obtained it. The stimuli that resulted in this knowledge must be made available. In SVB we listen to ourselves while we speak. We can do so by simply saying whatever comes to our mind or we can read any text for that purpose. To develop the habit of listening to ourselves while we speak, it does not matter what we say.. This doesn’t mean that what we say loses its meaning. To the contrary, it will only become more meaningful that way. When the stimuli that make SVB possible are there, it will occur, instantly. Your sound and the interoceptive experience of your body are such stimuli. By focusing on these stimuli your attention is effortlessly in the here and now.          

December 12, 2013

December 12, 2013

Dear Reader, 

 

As his private speech became more under control of his knowledge about behaviorism, this writer first began to write and then to say things differently. The change in his private speech had occurred due to his study of behaviorism, due to what should be considered public speech. However, the change in this writer’s public speech proved to be a complicated matter. After he had read many works of behaviorists, he felt an enormous urge to talk with them. As he attempted to contact them, it became clear, however, that none of them was willing to talk with him. Although he had a couple of brief phone conversations with some of them, these interactions were a great disappointment to him, because spoken communication was not seen by them as something  that we needed to engage in, in order to find out the contingencies of reinforcement that made it possible. 

Almost all the people he interacted with said the same boring thing: write about it! Although this writer had attempted to write to them, he had always remained reluctant about his own writings, because he wanted to talk with them. To him, spoken words were infinitely more important than written words, but to them, written words, or rather, the publication of papers in peer-reviewed journals, was the only thing that really mattered. Because of this difference in focus, this writer went on with what was reinforcing to him and lost all interest in trying to reach these behaviorists. He had never really been interested in writing papers and he reasoned that he would only accept a Ph.D. from an institution that would arrange an examination committee that was willing to engage in a dialogue, so that they could talk together about his thesis of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and thus could explore and verify his findings. 

To this very day this writer’s thesis remained unchanged. He believes that SVB, which extends the work of Skinner on operant conditioning, must be investigated while we talk, because it cannot be investigated by reading someone's writing. Those who know operant conditioning - the way in which behavior operates on the environment - must be able to accept the obvious fact that contingencies of reinforcement pertaining to spoken language are not the same as those pertaining to written language. This should be enough reason for behaviorists to be willing to talk with one another, but it is not. It is evident to this writer, that, unlike Skinner, the spoken verbal behavior of most behaviorists is not under control of behaviorism. 

Behaviorists can often be heard lamenting among themselves about why radical behaviorism isn’t catching on more rapidly in academia. Although it is our biggest unresolved issue, spoken communication is, of course also behaviorism’s elephant in the room. Their refusal to talk with each other has caused them to write repetitive, tedious papers, which hardly anyone wants to read. A comparable process seems to have occurred in the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, in which individuals fight within their own group for recognition of their own uniqueness, while outwardly, politically, they want “hearies” to have more understanding about them and get more recognition for the fact that they are different as a group. Like those in the deaf culture, behaviorists, due to their history of reinforcement, have difficulty acknowledging that their degree of deafness determines their preference of communicating. That we can remove ourselves from human interaction, by replacing our spoken with written language, has had many devastating consequences, only one of which is ignorance about and misrepresentation of behaviorism. 

   

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) brings life to behaviorism, because it makes us talk about what has been written. Skinner’s empirical work and the work of many other behaviorists will only find its way to a broader public when it is talked about. Naturally, such talking is teaching. The link between talking and teaching is of paramount importance. Since talking requires very different skills than writing, these skills will often develop at odds with each other. This writer, who earlier in his career was involved in acting, singing and poetry, knows for a fact that his talking had developed at the expense of his writing. 

However, there is nothing unique about lopsidedness. For many academics the opposite seemed to have occurred. Their ability to write scholarly papers became more important to them than their ability to speak.It must be emphasized that the competition and struggle for recognition in academia causes Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). To get a teaching position at a university, one must have published. On the other hand, it is nowhere a requirement that one must have spoken. It would make sense to have such a requirement, but only if we knew what that means. We all know what it means to publish a paper. We can look it up in our data base, we can find the paper and read it. As of yet, however, we do not know what it means to actually communicate. Our opinions about what that is lacks objectivity. It therefore appears to most scientists that our talking is mainly a subjective affair. 

By becoming aware of the great difference between SVB and NVB, we  become objective about our subjective communication experiences. Behaviorists should be capable of admitting that we are, when we speak, each other’s environment. Their inability to acknowledge this during their conversations with others should fail them as radical behaviorists and brand them as mentalists.  We are to some extent influenced by others and we are to some extent also influencing others. As verbal behavior, as Skinner has said, is behavior that is reinforced by others, there is no difference between SVB and NVB in that both are equally reinforced by others. What is reinforced only becomes clear if we analyze our behavioral repertoires. The spoken behavior to be modified requires a functional analysis. Enough has been written about how verbal behavior is reinforced by our environments. Once we speak about this matter, we will be stimulated to take note of the kind of behavior that is enhancing and enriching to us versus the behavior that is coerced and forced upon us. Only while we speak will we be able to acknowledge that SVB and NVB are universal response classes, which are mutually exclusive. 

SVB is the kind of communication which is recognized as reinforcing. NVB is also interpreted as reinforcing, but once the distinction between SVB and NVB has been made, it will be no longer viewed that way. It is this lack of comparison, which made us accept our NVB as normal, but once we can compare it to SVB, we recognize how deeply problematic NVB is. It makes biological sense that SVB is reinforcing for everyone, but that NVB is not. In SVB there is no activation of fight, flight or freeze response. In SVB there is no aversive stimulation. This means that in SVB we experience peacefulness, playfulness, relaxation and rejuvenation. The arousal of our nervous system in NVB is different because we are agitated, fearful, angered, aroused and anxious. We produce and use language differently under both these conditions.