June 2, 2014

June 2, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Because this writing is meant to be read by others than only this writer, it is important to mention that a new letter type was chosen for the month of June. The current letter type is called “forte.” It appeals to this writer for musical reasons. This writer has always loved compositions in which the music reaches some kind of beautiful climax. Music has always played a powerful role in this author’s life and it is due to his father’s love for music that he has such a great appreciation for it. There was a time when this author was addicted to the expression of strong emotions in opera music, but these days this need seems to have been fulfilled. Currently, his preference is more for calm and peaceful music. 

It is nice to use this letter type to write about how the stormy emotions from the past have finally subsided. It was always this enormous contrast which made the calm sounds sound so beautiful and it is this writer’s goal to make this available to the reader. Without this contrast we are completely lost. We need a similar contrast to be able to learn more about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). To know about SVB is to know about Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). We can only confidently go into SVB after we have thoroughly explored NVB. Since we haven’t done that, we are unable to go into SVB, even if we would like to. Most likely, our wish to go into SVB is based on our refusal to acknowledge the reality of NVB. 

It is astounding how in spite of years of successfully teaching of SVB this author still has problems attracting people to his seminars. He didn’t see an increase in popularity, but the lack of participants has never stopped him from organizing another seminar. It can be said, however, that the general response to SVB and NVB is remarkably stable. In as much as participants always feel deeply moved, inspired and enthusiastic about SVB, they just as readily forget about it and think they know it when in fact they don’t. SVB cuts through all the red tape.

There is something harsh about SVB which makes this author think again about his father. Whenever this author did something wrong as a child, his father became angry. His father, who would physically punish him for misbehaving, would insist on hearing the truth, which would always came out, usually accompanied by a flood of tears. This author knows that it is painful to differentiate between SVB and NVB, to avoid the pain that is involved in recognizing that we were often punished instead of reinforced and that the punishment we received had many problematic consequences. People would rather believe in something good. 

Our belief in something good is the biggest stand in the way for learning about SVB. Since SVB is not about our beliefs, but about our real experiences, people are easily turned off by it. There is a lot of environmental support for our beliefs, but there is very little support for our experiences, especially the  experiences which we have while we communicate. Only in SVB can we and do we recognize that our wish to understand things prevents us from experiencing it. Our understanding of SVB is based on this experience and can never be without it. The moment we think we have understood it, SVB becomes a belief, which disconnects us from our experience. We  don’t need to understand SVB, we need to experience it! Our need for understanding signifies our lack of experience. Those who claim to understand do so because of their lack of experience. There is nothing to claim when one experiences SVB. Whatever one experiences can be expressed in one's own words, pace and rhythm.  

SVB allows us to stay close to our own experience, because we speak in such a way that the speaker and the listener feel comfortable. This means that we allow our private speech to be expressed in our public speech as best as we can. This inclusion of our private speech into our public speech is not based on what we have to say to ourselves content-wise, but rather on whether we listen to ourselves. Although we may already have been expressing our feelings, we have not yet listened to them. Although we may think that we were already listening to our emotions, we haven’t really expressed hem, while we were listening to them. 

June 1, 2014

June 1, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This writing was written on June 2. Nothing was written on June 1, which was this author’s father’s birthday. He didn’t call or contact him and he felt good about it. By writing about yesterday, he creates the distance that he needs to be able to write in ways which he may not have done before. He doesn’t hate his father, but he is aware that his father has played and to some extent continues to play a complicated role in his life. He was thinking about him while he was jogging. 

This author was talking out loud with himself yesterday while he was jogging and letting himself know that it is okay the way it is. He didn’t talk so much about his father per se, but rather, about the fact that some years ago he decided to keep his father, as well as the rest of his family, out of his life. This decision has had such a positive influence on his life that he doesn’t want to jeopardize it. There is no way in which he can even think of going back to how things were in the past.

This author likes his life much better without any of his family members in it. His wife, who knows him sometimes better than he knows himself, thinks so too. She often suggested to him to stay away from his family, but he wasn’t listening to her and couldn’t resist the temptation of getting back in touch with them. Yesterday, as the author was jogging near a beautiful creek, thoughts about his family flooded his mind, because he knew they would have gathered to celebrate his father’s birthday. He didn’t even know anymore how old his father was. 

This is an important part of the conversation he had with himself. He reassured himself that he made the right decision and that everything that is currently happening in his life is the proof of that. Also, he explained the reason for this decision: he discovered Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), the vocal communication in which one listens to one’s self while one speaks. He has taught this way of talking for many years now, because it has been such an inspiration to him. 

Yesterday, as he was explaining to himself how SVB has guided him to where he is today, this author addressed the fact that SVB is indeed a very special kind of behavior, which continues to have such reinforcing consequences. If it wasn’t for the fact that this is the case, he wouldn’t have been able to decide what he decided and would have gone insane with sadness and despair. This author, who worked the last ten years with clients who suffer from schizophrenia and all other sorts of mood and anxiety disorders, knows first-hand about the devastating consequences of the lack of reinforcement for appropriate behaviors. 

This author has learned, all by himself, something which nobody could teach him. In effect, he has discovered something which wasn’t there before. Unlike those who suffer from mental health afflictions, his ability to listen to what he has to say allowed him to continue to merge his speaking with his listening, an activity, he found, which seldom occurs, even in supposedly "well-functioning" people.  

Although it may be argued that there is nothing new about a person’s ability to listen while he or she speaks and that we all do this when we name things, what this author gives names to are processes which have not yet been named by anyone. It is one thing, for a child, to be able to say “house” in the presence of a house and to point to a picture of a house when someone is asking “what is this?’” It is quite another thing, for an adult, to have ongoing conversation in which all the speakers continuously listen to themselves and thus to each other while they speak.  

Since this behavior hasn’t been learned, the author’s family members, as well as many other people from his past, had to be left behind. They are left behind, like those who didn’t learn how to read and write. They miss out on reinforcement possibilities this author is now familiar with. They suffer from the lack of reinforcement. There is nothing stimulating about those who stagnated in their development. This author is happy with what he has found and is not blaming anyone for how things are. He understands why things are the way they are. Those who are not open to his work, they are the ones who miss out.

May 31, 2014

May 31, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Speaking and listening as well as writing and reading are not learned simultaneously, but separately. As a consequence of the separate development of our repertoires of speaking and listening and writing and reading, many variations of verbal behavior exist. These variations are determined by the extent to which our speaking and listening and writing and reading are joined. 

This author found that when repertoires of speaking and listening and writing and reading are not properly integrated, this causes a different kind of verbal behavior than when they are synchronized. When either one is more developed than the other, a clear mismatch can be seen and heard in how we speak or write. Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is characterized by the extent to which speaking and listening and writing and reading have developed not only separately, but also unevenly. It is must be called NVB, because this mismatch can be understood as the root of all our problems of relationship. 

Only to the extent that speaking and listening and writing and reading are connected can speakers and listeners and writers and readers experience and maintain Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). However, those who have developed similar repertoires aren’t necessarily capable of having SVB. What this fusion of speaking and listening and writing and reading really refers to is that we are talking about the same things. We have SVB if we do, but NVB if this is not the case. In the former, we use the same names to identify what we are talking about, but in the latter, we may use the same name, but we give it a different meaning. Since speakers often behave simultaneously as listeners and visa versa, and since writers also often behave simultaneously as readers and visa versa, it is important to have an account which emphasizes how these behaviors interlock. In Verbal Behavior (1957) Skinner refers to SVB when he talked about this process as the speaker-as-own-listener.   

May 30, 2014

May 30, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

This writer is listening to the beautiful music of Vivaldi. He hears violins and a human voice, which sings together with these violins. Together they create a miraculous sound. This music is so dear to this writer that listening to it makes him cry. He sits with his laptop on his knees and he feels grateful for being able to enjoy the gift that has been given to him, which in the past so often has made him feel lonely and rejected. His ability to appreciate art and beauty is so vast that he is feeling more emotions than most people do. 

The music is sung by only just one person. The author hears in this himself as well as each human being individually. No matter whether we come from cultural back grounds which are in favor of individualism or collectivism, each human being is an entity which is endowed with experiences to which only he or she individually has access. We are all in some way trying to find out how our private experiences are related to mankind’s collective experience. 

Now the author of this writing is listening to a heavenly choir that sings with one voice. Many layers weave into a majestic fabric together with many string instruments. The author imagines that the pain and the suffering of the individual which was listened to is now commented on. It is as if the choir laments “That’s how it is; we are alone with ourselves, but we go through the same experience.” The instrumental part that follows echoes ancient voices. 

May 29, 2014

May 29, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

This writing is under discriminative control of Italian Baroque music. The reader can’t hear this music, but this writer can hear it and this will make him write words, which sound like trumpets and violins. Moreover, an entire choir will sing these words and makes the reader think about texts which are sung.  The victorious sounds of this music sets the stage for events to occur which couldn’t happen in any other way. Many of these beautiful sounds are never listened to in our current environment. They need to be reintroduced or they will be lost if they are no longer made. They are only made if they can be made. What made people make these wonderful sounds? What makes us produce the horrible sounds we produce today? Certainly, different environments led to very different sounds and if we would know how to create these environments, we would again become capable of producing and enjoying beautiful sounds. 

During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which the speaker listens to him or to herself while he or she speaks, an unusual phenomenon happens because it can happen: the human organism is experienced as one unity, which means, one is simultaneously the speaker and the listener.In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) the speaker isn’t listening to him or herself while he or she speaks. Consequently, turn-taking is absent in NVB, because only the speaker is allowed to be and to remain the speaker, while another person than the speaker is only allowed to be and to remain the listener. 

Another way of explaining the aforementioned is that NVB is always uni-directional, while SVB is always bi-directional. In SVB there is a reciprocal relationship between the speaker and the listener, whereas in NVB the speaker and the listener are not connecting with each other. Although the speaker who produces NVB always produces NVB because he was, is or continues to be reinforced for his or her NVB, the disconnect between the speaker and the listener in NVB is always caused by the speaker and not by the listener. Speakers cause SVB or NVB and listeners reinforce one or the other.

Speakers who don’t listen to themselves while they speak prevent the listener from understanding what they are saying in ways which haven’t really been identified because we are so used to and conditioned by NVB. Once the distinction is made between SVB and NVB we get clear on what we were missing.Speakers who don’t listen to themselves while they speak always produce a tone of voice which signifies negative emotions. 

During the seminars this writer regularly facilitates it becomes clear that the participants are seemingly deaf to the sound of their own well-being. We listen to our stress, anxiety, fear and anger, but not to our peacefulness.Individuals begin to listen to themselves while they speak, because they are stimulated to do so by this author. Once this happens, they become, even if it is only for a few moments, capable of hearing the sound of their well-being. In moments of SVB speakers produce an enjoyable sound and others can hear it too.  

During NVB we don't express our well-being. Some got more love and attention than others and those who did accrued due to this behavioral history more SVB components than others. Those of us who were taught to not only to listen to others, but who were also reinforced for listening to themselves, they received more love and attention than those who were only reinforced for listening to others, but who were prevented from listening to themselves. They grew up in a way which conditioned them to coerce others to listen to them.

However, it must be made clear, that those who presumably received more love and attention, will only be able to produce SVB if they focus their attention on the distinction between SVB and NVB. They too depend on someone who knows this distinction to stimulate them to produce SVB. The mere fact that those who received more love and attention were able to gather more components that make SVB possible than those who didn’t receive as much love and attention, doesn’t make them produce it. SVB is only produced if the environment (the author) stimulates us do so. 

The instruction given by this author, to listen to one self while one speaks, is as necessary for those who already gathered some SVB components, who therefore have an easier time understanding what SVB is, as for those for whom these components need to be build up from scratch.The process occurring in this author’s seminars in which these components are discriminated, understood and verified, creates an acknowledgment among the participants that our behaviors are response products of the environments that we have lived in, in which listening to ourselves while we speak was never really taught by anyone.

 

Just as there are behavioral cusps that determine our individual development, there are behavioral cusps that have the potential to unite the human race. Due to scientific findings new behaviors are shaped and old behaviors are extinguished. SVB is a global cusp with immense power. A speaker is only a conscious speaker if this speaker is also a listener while he or she speaks. Listening before one speaks or after one has spoken is often mistaken for listening while one speaks. When one listens while one speaks one is a conscious communicator, because the production and the observation or, rather, the listening, occur here and now.

The opposite is also true. The listener is only truly a listener if he or she speaks. We don’t listen, because we don’t speak or, rather, we can’t listen, because we are not allowed to speak by those who coerce us into a way of communicating which this author calls Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).The aim of this author is to point out that NVB, in which neither the speaker is really a speaker nor the listener is really a listener, should no longer be considered as communication. NVB is the language of codependence in which the enabler is enabled and in which negativity and dysfunctionality is reinforced.  

NVB is not communication, because it is about domination and being dominated, coercion and being coerced, manipulation and being manipulated, oppression and being oppressed, sales and being sold, abuse and being abused. SVB is communication because the speaker and the listener can be one because of the absence of aversive stimulation.SVB is the language of mental health and NVB is the language of psychopathology. We don't  cause our own actions, but we cause each other’s actions, because we are each other’s environment. In NVB, we are unaccountable to how we influence each other, because we were made to believe that we cause our own actions. 

In SVB we are all accountable because we can and we want to be accountable, but in NVB we are all unaccountable, because we can’t be accountable. There is nothing to hold anyone accountable with, because there is no confrontation or communication going on in NVB.  SVB is scientific communication, but NVB is unscientific communication. Scientific communication allows for objectivity as well as subjectivity, whereas unscientific communication excludes subjectivity in the name of objectivity.  

Another way of saying this is that private speech is tossed out of public speech in NVB, but in SVB our private speech is included in our public speech. Private speech is a function of public speech, but in our NVB public speech is wrongly considered to be a function of our private speech! NVB public speech causes NVB private speech and SVB public speech causes SVB private speech. The only way to solve NVB private speech is by engaging more often in SVB public speech. Nothing can or needs to be done about NVB private speech.

NVB private speech always signifies a lack of SVB public speech. It is also NVB public speech which makes us believe that NVB private speech causes NVB public speech. NVB public speech is caused by the absence of the contingencies which make SVB public speech possible. NVB public speech resembles a state of deprivation from which we want to escape in any way possible. Since contingencies for SVB are not present when contingencies for NVB are present, we attempt to escape from NVB by producing more NVB, both publicly as well as privately. 

The only way in which we can escape from the onslaught of NVB and eventually can learn to avoid it, is by recognizing it for what it is and how it comes to about. Discrimination between SVB and NVB allows us to continue with SVB private speech in the face of NVB public speech. This ability,  however, is only as good as the extent to which we were exposed to and engaged in ongoing SVB public speech. Since nobody, not even this writer, has had such exposure, we struggle to achieve and maintain something that presumably resembles SVB, but which is NVB.

Although he knows how to create the environment that makes SVB possible, this writer is often not in the position to make the necessary changes and doesn’t experience SVB on an ongoing basis either. However, since he regularly organizes seminars, he has a sense of what it is like.The reinforcing effects of what SVB on an ongoing basis can be like has been an inspiration which has determined this writer’s behavior for at least the last thirty  years. The behavioral momentum of the SVB of this author has certainly increased and is likely to continue to increase even more. 

This writer is not, as most people in his seminars do and as he himself did in the past, trying to have SVB! His knowledge of the contingencies of reinforcement is such that he knows that it will happen when it can happen. The increase of his rate of SVB is no longer anything special, but something that is familiar to him. From his work with students and individuals who came to his seminars this writer has derived confidence that SVB can be recognized by anyone who can talk. SVB and NVB are universal categories of verbal behavior which can be easily pointed out to those who are not  familiar with it. This writer believes it is not productive to think of them in terms of good or bad. It is more helpful to think of SVB and NVB as two languages that are learned under different circumstances at different locations.