March 12, 2014

March 12, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

After more than eight years of classical singing, I suddenly stopped. My father was disappointed and also my friends were puzzled why I had given up on something I enjoyed so much and was so good at. A period of my life began in which I questioned everything. Meanwhile, I tried to meditate and find peace of mind, but I became more and more upset and frustrated. The reader is reminded here it is not the chronological course of events which is why I write this. I write about this part of my history to revisit what set the stage for my discovery of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). The fact that I stopped singing felt like a sacrifice. I knew I wanted to go on with something else and I had to free myself, but at that moment I had no clue  what that was. I felt a deep sense of loss.

 

In operant conditioning, the effectiveness of a stimulus, for example water, is determined by what is called Establishing Operations (EO), the deprivation of water, commonly known as thirst. Initially, I thought that I was thirsty to find out who I really was, but my dissatisfaction with spoken communication was such that I wanted to find out why people talk the way they do. My so-called soul-searching had in reality always been an exploration about how I interacted with my environment and how my environment interacted with me. The former had gotten more attention than the latter. I had been overly involved with how I interacted with my environment. This had led to singing and later to poetry. 

My poems were about switching back and forth between how I influence my environment and how my environment influences me. I liked them more than my singing, because I began saying what I was thinking and feeling. I was always singing songs which had been written by others, which were sung by others, but I wanted to state my own point of view. Also in my so-called spiritual search, I came across gurus, whose followers demanded a kind of interaction which felt unnatural and constrained to me. I wanted another way of talking and I threw away my poems because they weren’t cutting it either. They couldn’t contain a conversation. Nothing I had ever read captured the interaction accurately.

I was disillusioned about arts and done with spirituality. I wanted to talk, not at someone, but with someone. I wanted others to talk with me, not at me, but with me. I outgrew my need for approval by finding out what I really wanted. Because I am capable of expressing this so clearly, others, who don’t know what they want, often accused me of being arrogant. All people who have NVB are on automatic pilot, which prevents them from thinking about what they want. They think that they know what they want, but they don’t and they are suspicious about anyone who can articulate and fulfill their needs, because they have been exploited that way. We are all being exploited by our emotional needs, which cannot be fulfilled by the books, films, plays, games, politics, religions, matches, magazines and other carrots that are dangled in front of us. 

We need to communicate with each other to fulfill our needs, but we are not likely to do this because so many things distract us. Supposedly, we can get our satisfaction from other things than human relationship. Not only is this not true, these other things make human relationship impossible. Moreover, these other things perpetuate NVB and prevent SVB. Although I have had them too, I was always dissatisfied with them. 

I am the oldest son of a father, who, as a child, experienced war and devastation. The traumatic experience that had scared him was  the only way in which I was able to feel a connection. Every year, on May 5^th, the day on which Holland was liberated by the allied forces from the Germans, we would commemorate those who had lost their lives in war by silently walking with hundreds of people past a war memorial. Our solemn annual procession was accompanied by the singing of nightingales. I only felt close to my father during these processions.  

Short before I emigrated to the United States, my mother told me a peculiar story about a midwife, who had helped her gave birth to my two older sisters and who was also scheduled to help her give birth to me. This woman, who was  also a close friend, died in car accident days before I was born. Thus, my mother was mourning her death while I was born. She felt that I missed the midwife, who had always been singing when she was around to help her. My mother was in tears as she apologized that she had kept this story a secret for so long. She felt that I was missing something that she was unable to give.        

 

March 11, 2014

March 11, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M. S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

As I was explaining in my previous writing, my self-listening had a long history. Because of my familiarity with singing and listening to myself I was inclined to pay closely attention enough to go on with it. I don’t mean to elaborate on this history as anything special, but I think it is important, because it played a decisive role in that one moment that I found that gong. From that moment on I began to listen to myself and I have never stopped with it. 

Many people at some moment have listened to themselves, but they did not go on with it. When I explain it, they immediately understand it, because they have already experienced it. The only difference between me and them is that I went on with it, in spite of the amount of rejection it evoked. It is due to this rejection that most people don’t go on with it. Stated differently, most people have a sense that Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) it is possible, that it is enjoyable and meaningful, but they can’t continue with it, because there is nothing to continue it with. They are not reinforced for their SVB, but they are reinforced for their Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and so they go on with that. 

When we have SVB, many sources of reinforcement become available to us.  However, these sources are only valuable to the extent that they reinforce SVB. Many behaviors can begin to occur in response to SVB which distract from it. Ironically, reinforcement that becomes available due to SVB often results in an increase of exactly those behaviors which make it impossible. In my case it also did that, but because of my behavioral history with listening to my own sound, I was experiencing such punitive consequences each time I was having NVB, that I was more inclined to go on with SVB. For most of us NVB is reinforced, but not for me. For me NVB never seemed to have worked. 

 

Let me give a couple of examples to illustrate why I was, more than others, inclined to listen to myself. My coercive father had a saying he often repeated: “Those who don’t listen will have to feel.” He threatened to hit his children if they did not do as he said. I was afraid of him, because he hit me many times. I tried very hard to listen to him, but out of nervousness I misunderstood him. My father and many other people, who I now recognize as representatives of NVB, have told me over and over again that I am NOT listening. When I wasn’t yet capable of understanding that they were the ones who were not listening (to themselves), the accusation that I was not listening was confusing and upsetting. Those who have NVB always blame those who actually listen. However, those who want to listen, don’t want to listen to NVB. Those who want to listen, want to listen to SVB, but are accused of hearing only what they want to hear. As a result of my allegiance with my mother and my sisters, who were scolded stiff by my father, I felt pain each time I didn’t understand him. Misunderstanding became painful because it was followed by my father's punishment and abuse. 

Nobody wants pain. If we can avoid it, we will. Of course, I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of my father’s anger. It took me years to realize that he hit me because he felt misunderstood by me. Yet, I felt misunderstood by him and my need for his approval brought me again and again in a situation in which he rejected me. A lot of my authority-challenging behavior was reinforced by my father’s rejection. I got his negative attention, which was better than no attention at all and became an expert in attracting negative attention.

When I discovered opera, I was attracted, because it was an outlet for my pain and loneliness, but it also made me get positive attention. I was reinforced by my success and even my father liked it. He had been singing in a choir for years and approved of my choice to become a tenor singer. At the time, I had records of all the great operas and all the great singers and I sang up to five hours a day. The more dramatic the music, the more I liked it. I was drawn to lyrical expression of sorrow and I was good at it. However, once I began to study at the Conservatory, it was no longer exciting. Surprisingly, singing was only a small part of the study. Because I was no longer reinforced by my former singing teacher and because I was assigned to a homosexual, who during my audition had decided that he should be my teacher, I lost my interest and gave up. Although I gave up on something, I had given myself the opportunity to discover something new.

March 10, 2014

March 10, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

After years of listening to my own self-talk and failed attempts to include my private speech into my public speech, I listened to a singing performance. A friend of mine and his girlfriend got singing lessons and demonstrated to others what they had learned. It was a delightful event. After the performance was over I congratulated them. They introduced me to their singing teacher, who immediately asked if I would also like to take singing lessons with her. I agreed to try it. I had always loved singing and had performed in musicals during high school. When I came to my first lesson, she smelled cigarette smoke on my breath and said she wouldn’t teach me unless I gave up smoking. I gave up smoking and started singing. 

What is important in this is that one behavior was replacing another, because I was in a new non-smoking environment. In addition to this was the fact that I dressed up as nicely as I could, each time I went to my singing lessons, which took place in a little castle. To go to this castle, I had to take the bus and travel to another town. Interestingly, later on, I would buy a house in that town, after I had married my American wife. I studied classical singing for many years and became so good at it that I was admitted to the Royal Conservatory. My singing teacher was an older gay man. Since he preyed on me, I discontinued my study and after I gave up singing, I was faced with deep sense of loss. The years of listening to my own voice while singing had effected my self-talk. When I was talking out loud with myself it felt as if I was listening to a different kind of singing. I recognized my sound played a big role in how I wanted to communicate. Without the correct sound, my communication with others seemed utterly useless. 

One day, I was sitting by myself on a carpet in the empty attic of my house. I was trying to meditate, but I was restless and I began to talk with myself. In the corner of the attic was a small box. I pulled it closer to see what was in it. It contained some old novels and also a small gong and a stick with a ball. I hit the gong and instantly loved its sound. When I said this to myself, I noticed that my voice sounded exactly like that gong. My sound was calm and pleasant and I knew that this was the sound with which I wanted to communicate. I tried it and it worked. I spoke with myself for about ten minutes. It was so profoundly satisfying that it made me feel so peaceful that I lay flat on my back on the carpet. My cat, who was usually nowhere to be found, came to sit on top of my chest and started purring. I fell into a deep state of relaxation and felt confident that I had found what I had been looking for. 

The sound of the gong and my experience with listening to my singing had made me recognize that my voice is an objective phenomenon, an independent variable in scientific terms.

The dependent variable is our speech and the independent variable is the sound of our voice. How we sound determines what we say. If we speak with a voice that expresses anxiety, stress, anger, despair etc. this determines the content of what we say. In other words, what we say is a function of how we say it. If non-verbally there is well-being and relaxation this will predictably result into a different content. 

The how of what we say determines if we are understood. If the how of what we say is an aversive stimulus, it is likely to elicit an aversive response. This will elicit the sympathetic activation (fight/flight/freeze response) of our autonomic nervous system. When we consider operant conditioning consisting of stimulus, response and consequence, we can see how the consequence of our negative affect, or aversive stimulation, is NVB, but that consequence of our positive affect, represented by the sound of our voice (as well as by they way we look, move or breathe) is SVB.  

NVB is reinforced because SVB is not. Likewise, SVB is reinforced because NVB is not. The reason for why we get upset, hostile or defensive is not in us. It is something in our environment which reinforces our speech. The best way to understand this is by considering our affects as different languages. One will only learn Russian if one surrounds oneself with Russian texts or ideally with Russian people. 

March 9, 2014

March 9, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

I read a paper in which Skinner was saying we need a new unit of analysis which consists of form and meaning. Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) are my extensions of Skinner’s work. SVB and NVB are such a new units. These categories of Verbal Behavior beautifully organize how we speak with one another.  

In NVB things are organized differently than in SVB. In NVB there is a hierarchy. Although a speaker may speak, he or she may only speak when he or she is spoken to. In NVB speakers dominate and ignore listeners, who are often not allowed to speak and who are forced to listen. Understanding in NVB means something completely different than in SVB; in NVB we are forced to conform to authority, which means that we are listening outwardly, to others and not inwardly, to ourselves.  Those in authority, who in NVB do all the talking, make others to listen to them, but they too are not listening to themselves.

In NVB there are no stimuli that make us listen to ourselves.  Speakers and listeners are outward-oriented in NVB. Someone is in control and others are controlled, but both the controller and the controlled focus in NVB on what happens outside of themselves. Thus, in NVB, what happens within our skin, our private speech, can’t become part of our public speech.

In SVB private speech is considered as a function of public speech. Negative NVB self-talk is caused by negative NVB public speech and positive SVB self-talk is caused by positive SVB public speech. Actually, negative self-talk is not caused by negative public speech, but rather, it is part of negative public speech, because negative emotions are the basis for NVB and positive emotions are the basis for SVB. 

Once we listen to the sound of our own voice while we speak, SVB can and will occur. When this happens, when a speaker really hears him or herself, while he or she speaks, this instantly ameliorates our negative self-talk. Indeed, only self-listening can make a new kind of public speech possible, but without it, it can and it will not occur. NVB is not so much based on the impossibility of self-listening, but is based on the absence of what stimulates self-listening. There is a great difference between these two, because in the former we are likely to think that something is wrong with us, but we don't show this, while in the latter, we look outside of ourselves and we find that the stimuli that make SVB possible were missing. Instead of finding fault with ourselves for not being able to produce SVB, we acknowledge that NVB was produced by the stimuli that were present. In both SVB and NVB we are not responsible for the way in which we speak, because our verbal behavior is a function of the environment. In SVB speakers and listeners treat each other as their environment. 

 

Without an environmental perspective, we remain stuck with NVB. We can’t prolong those moments in which we experience SVB if we remain unaware that our situation has changed. Change of behavior won’t happen if we continue to believe that we are responsible for causing the change. Change happens because stimuli are either present or absent. Contingencies of reinforcement set the stage for change; stimuli of which NVB is a function can be replaced by stimuli that maintain SVB. 

The meaning of SVB is in changing the situation. Loss of meaning which occurs in NVB is because change is prevented. The form of NVB is rigid and repetitive, while the form of SVB is flexible and original. NVB obsesses about exclusion, but SVB invites and includes. SVB explores and discovers, while NVB dissociates and ignores. Loneliness is the form of NVB, but togetherness is the form of SVB. We speak with each other in SVB, but we speak at each other in NVB. In SVB meaning is re-created and re-discovered, but in NVB meaning is lost because it is mechanically repeated. 

In SVB we are conscious communicators, but in NVB we are imprisoned by habits which change the sound of our voice.  In NVB we speak with a voice which is not our true sound, in SVB we find our voice and embody our communication.  Because of how we speak we are conscious or unconscious. The sound of our voice makes us and keeps us conscious. 

When I began to listen to the sound of my own voice, it was because it reminded me of how my parents had interacted with me. During my childhood talking with them had made me feel completely at ease. I grew up with a loving mother and two older sisters. My father was off to work during the day and I was surrounded by women. There was plenty of sensitivity going around to which also my grandmothers, aunts and neighbors added their part. As my parents were Catholics, the issue of anti-conception was taboo. More children were God’s will and a priest regularly checked if a new child was on its way. So, after my two younger brothers and younger sister were born, my mother was no longer able to give me the attention she had been giving me when I was her only son. Moreover, three more siblings had made her feel overwhelmed. With six children to care for, my mother became stressed and moody. 

The calm and peaceful first years of my life were over and I was one of six children battling to get my parents attention. Since I got the attention in a negative way, this was mostly reinforced. By the time I reached puberty I felt very isolated. The impact of kind females and later the absence of this, had shaped my behavior and my preferences Although I was deeply unhappy as a young adult, I knew that I was missing something that I had once experienced.  

Listening to my self was a predictable consequence of my frustration with my communication with my parents. For many years I felt I was looking for something I had lost, which I had once possessed. My search for myself had only made me more unsure about what I wanted and left me unable to satisfy my need for connection with other. I couldn’t find well-being like I once experienced and felt rejected and misunderstood. My parents, who had certainly loved me as a child, couldn’t communicate with me as an adult. They expressed anxiety and fear and I repeatedly fell into the pattern of still seeking their approval. Also, I was demanding approval from many others.  

Full of despair, I began to talk out loud with myself. To my own surprise this gave me a great sense of relief. I was able to say to myself what others didn’t want to hear and I decided that if others didn’t want to listen to me then I would listen to myself. This allowed me to formulate to myself what I wanted. I began to accept that I wanted to communicate in a way that others weren’t able to. Others weren’t able to talk like me because they didn’t want it as much. My urge to talk with others in the same way as I talked with myself set the stage for my discovery. I discovered SVB all by myself. In behaviorism, an establishing operations determines the effectiveness of a reinforcer. In other words, water is only reinforcing when we are thirsty.  You could say that I was very thirsty for communication.

While talking out loud by myself, I discovered that spoken communication is only reinforcing when I listen to myself while I speak. With no distraction from others, I spoke with a voice which enhanced my own sense of well-being. I became intrigued and excited by this immediate positive effect and I decided to explore this because it made me feel so incredibly good. I found that I sounded good only when I didn’t try to sound good. I figured that self-listening, which made me sound so good, should also be possible when I was talking with others and I tried to test this. It was possible, but only for a short while. It went well for a moment, but then, for some unknown reason, it was no longer possible. I tried my best to get it back, but I couldn’t and the harder I tried, the more I failed. Frustrated once more with my communication with others, I returned to my solitude and talked again out loud by myself. Once I did that, it became very apparent that in my conversation with others I had lost my self-listening. 

What made me lose my resonant sound when I talked with others and what made me find it back while I was talking by myself? I had to find it out and the only way to do this was to thoroughly investigate it. Again and again, I had to leave my conversation with others to check in with myself. Although I was absolutely sure something was affecting the sound of my voice, I was unable to figure out what it was. 

Years went by during which I tried to meditate and become enlightened. At one point, I even believed that I had reached it. What I had achieved, however, was an understanding about a new way of communicating. I wanted to communicate in a way in which only very few are able to communicate. These few others, however, reinforced me. I looked everywhere for people to talk with and once I had found them, I would talk and often burst in tears. Oddly, each time I cried I felt relieved, cleansed and at peace. Crying then felt like a blessing to me. 

This writing, which, of course, is only a selection of certain parts of my behavioral history, is to inform the reader about how I came to put SVB together. Although I don’t think that anyone needs to travel my path (or anyone else’s path for that matter), I think that my behavior is similar to the reader’s behavior, because it is shaped the environment. To shed light on this interaction between organism and the environment, I want to illustrate to the reader how my previous environments have shaped my current behavior.