My Third Response to Fraley

Dear Reader,

This is my third response to the paper “On Verbal Behavior: The First of Four Parts” (2004) by Lawrence E. Fraley. Almost everyone believes that they have thoughts, that they, as people say, talk privately inside their heads with themselves. This pervasive false belief, which always goes hand in hand with the unscientific, profoundly problematic, but, also utterly immature notion that we, as individuals, cause our own behavior, is maintained by our usual nasty way of talking which I call Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It goes without saying (pun intended) that we are affected by our involvement in NVB. Whether we acknowledge it or not, it is our common way of talking which makes us unhappy. This doesn’t mean, however, that we have negative thoughts and feelings, as we and our so-called mental health professionals believe, but it means that we experience negative stimuli inside our body about which we seldom if ever talk directly. Only during Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which we can fully express ourselves, don’t we mistake these private events any longer as our thoughts or even as our feelings or as our private speech.

Obviously, SVB is a very different way of talking than NVB. As a matter of fact, SVB is so different that while you engage in it, you realize you have always known this was possible, but were never able to get to it. When you, at long last, engage in ongoing SVB, it is clear why your previous way of talking was literally driving you nuts. The only way to have SVB is to stop yourself from having NVB. To have only a moment of SVB is even more troubling than not to have it at all. As long as we can’t continue with SVB, our biggest problem is the very thing which is so incredibly beneficial to all of us: genuine communication.

Although we are, of course, conditioned by our verbal communities and although this certainly means that our bodies and brains have changed and our neural behavior has been and continues to be affected by our verbal environments, there is no such a thing as “private subvocal speech.” To talk about what goes on covertly, inside of our own skin, in the same way as what goes on overtly, is bound to be ineffective as inside of us there is no speaker and no listener. Moreover, our common assumption of this non-existent “private subvocal speech” takes our attention away and endlessly and unnecessarily distracts us from the only real speech, which is overt speech. Only by focusing on overt speech are we able to differentiate between SVB and NVB.

Fraley, who presumably would love the world to know about the science of human behavior, nevertheless still refers to what he describes as “private subvocal speech.” He uses the example (long quote) of someone who is having the (covert) thought “it’s going to rain soon.” “Two points are relevant: First, the elements of that private subvocal speech were originally conditioned under public circumstances. That is, when the thinker was being conditioned originally to respond in that particular linguistic way to stimuli that typically precede rain, the speech was audible to members of the verbal community. They could then consequate it appropriately and with precision thus conditioning the person to exhibit that verbal behavior in a form that is common to that verbal community. When manifestations of that form of speaking recede to the private subvocal level of mere thought, those thoughts, which are manifesting only as neural activity, reflect the common language of the verbal community. As often noted, people think linguistically only in a language that previously they have learned. Second, the current private thought may in turn share in evoking some publicly detectable behavior that can be consequated by the social community, such as reaching for an umbrella to be carried along on an outing. If that public gesture is then punished or reinforced by community members, those consequences affect not only the proximal publicly visible gesture but, to a lesser yet often significant extent, the preceding private verbal behavior that shared in evoking that public response. Much private verbal behavior is consequated indirectly in that way.” What was conditioned under public circumstances was NOT private subvocal speech, but specific physiological responses which, if we cannot talk about them, inevitably result in the illusion that overt speech continues inside of us.

Once the notion of “private verbal behavior” has been accepted, we are getting stuck with a whole bunch of falsehoods. There surely NEVER was a “thinker”, who “was being conditioned originally to respond in that particular linguistic way to stimuli that typically precede rain” when “the speech was audible to members of the verbal community.” It was only an overt speaker, who produces sound that can be heard by a listener, who was conditioned in that particular way. Certain neural behavior was conditioned, but neither was a thinker nor a thought involved in this process, but only overt speech. The overt responses which Fraley describes (taking out the umbrella), are produced without any thinker and without any thought. According to Fraley, public speech recedes to “the private subvocal level of mere thought, those thoughts, which are manifesting only as neural activity, reflect the common language of the verbal community.” If these so-called private subvocal thoughts only manifest as neural activity, what is wrong in just calling them that? Why can’t we talk about the stimuli we experience inside our body? It is only due to our involvement in NVB that we seem to be unable to talk about what goes on within our skin, but in SVB we talk about them beautifully.

Fraley is ABSOLUTELY wrong when he writes “people think linguistically only in a language that previously they have learned”, as people only SPEAK in the language they have learned! This is especially apparent when you work with people who have been diagnosed with so-called mental disorders. The psychotic schizophrenic may engage in what is described as word-salad, but he or she never speaks a word in a language that he or she wasn’t previously conditioned by. When the schizophrenic is said to be internally stimulated, you should listen to what he or she wants to say. Neither do you privately speak with yourself inside your head, nor is a schizophrenic hearing any voices, but both of us are certainly responding to stimuli in our body which are the result of the extent to which we were involved in SVB or NVB. No doubt, NVB, the speech which separates us from our environment and makes it seem as if there are two environments, the environment inside of our skin and outside of our skin, plays a major role psycho-pathology. It is only during SVB that we can talk about what is inside and outside our skin as one environment.

Since You Are Not Contacting Me

Dear Reader,

Since you are not contacting me, I am contacting you. If you had contacted me, there would have been no need for me to contact you. I don’t need to contact you, but I am able to contact you and I know that you are unable to contact me. I also know that I contact you in a different way than many other people do. I don’t contact you to be admired by you, to impress you or to pretend that I have the solution to all your problems.

I contact you to talk with you, as I like to share with you my Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). If you let me explain to you what SVB is, you will find it is a great treasure. SVB is not what it is because of me, but I happen to be the one who discovered it and who knows quite a lot about it. The importance of SVB also has nothing to do with you. If you want it to be important for you, you will not be able to have it. You are used to a superficial, energy-draining way of talking in which everyone demands and struggles to get the attention. Surely, Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), your current way of talking, makes you feel better than others, but I am contacting you to have SVB with me. To me, there is no greater pleasure than to enjoy SVB together with others.

Since I am already having SVB on my own and with those who are learning about it from me, I don’t need you to have SVB with me. Many of the topics you keep bringing up are unimportant to me, as they are all related to NVB. If there is no one to have SVB with, I will still continue to have it on my own. You could do the same, but instead you engage in NVB, as you have totally forgotten that you would like to have SVB. Yes, I believe you want to have SVB, even if you never talk with me. Talking with me proves my point.

If you get to talk with me, we will be talking about, we will analyze, how we control each other’s way of talking. We can only develop an effective technology of behavior after we have acknowledged that our common way of talking, NVB, has prevented us from this development. By engaging in SVB, we will learn to talk about control of behavior in a positive manner. Due to our involvement in NVB, we avoid, demonize and forget about that inescapable fact that all human behavior is determined and therefore is controlled. The question is not whether behavior is controlled, but how we will control behavior. Only by engaging in SVB are we able to plan the necessary contingencies that reliably produce effective, healthy, happy and stable behavior.

I Would Like to Talk With You

Dear Reader,

In 2019, I would like to finally talk with you. It is going to be great. It is no coincidence I often repeat this message, as only very few people do actually talk with me. If you don’t like to read my often repeated message, it must be because it disturbs your tenacious belief that you can learn about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) without talking with me. My writing is to let you know that this is not true. You will not get anything out of my writing as long as you don’t talk with me. Only those who have talked with me get something out of my writing. I am very serious about this, as I know you have been conditioned to believe that what is written will change your behavior. It will not. This message needs to be repeated, as you need to be reminded that you haven’t talked with me and you haven’t changed.

I may sound stupid to you, but as long as you don’t talk with me, you literally can’t hear me. By repeating myself, it may become clear that I am serious about what I write and what you read. If you would be serious about what I have written, you would be reading it out loud and listen to the sound of your own voice while you read. I want you to know that if you are reading these words without producing any sound, you are not serious about what I have written. I don’t want to talk with you to make you listen to me, I want to talk with you to make you listen to you.

You may not believe me, but the only way you are going to be able to change, is if you listen to yourself while you speak. My writing is based on my way of talking, SVB, in which I stimulate you to listen to yourself while you speak. Actually, in SVB we all stimulate each other to listen to our selves while we speak. The positive changes that are possible with this simple, pragmatic process are enormous, but these changes will only occur if you begin to speak in order to be able to listen.

It is a disastrous myth that human psychology is in any way enhanced by what we read. Stated differently, the printed word cannot replace the spoken word. Whatever is written can only make sense to the extent that it is spoken and listened to. Most of what is written prevents speaking as it is not listened to. If writing makes you talk, it makes you talk in in a predetermined manner as it has strengthened your belief. My writing is not going to add to your many burdensome beliefs.

If you would begin to listen to your voice while you read what you read, you would notice that most of what you read distracts you from who you are. You cannot read my words, silently or out loud, without realizing that they are about you. These words are written with the only purpose that you will hear yourself when you read them out loud. Don’t bother with how you sound. Just sound the way you do when you are not trying to sound important, kind, open, powerful, strong, knowledgeable, free, honest, humble, polite, in control, independent, on top of it and confident.

When you listen to yourself while you speak and when you no longer try to make yourself sound in any particular kind of way, you will be able to effortlessly step out of your long conditioning history with Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It is such a liberating process. You will notice that you no longer have NVB, but SVB. You will know it for sure, you can hear it that you are authentic.

My Fourth Reponse to Fraley

Dear Reader,

This is my fourth response to the paper “On Verbal Behavior: The First of Four Parts” (2004) by Lawrence E. Fraley. I respond to this paper as Fraley writes about the implications for training of verbal behavior. Since I want readers to know about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), I would like them to recognize that Fraley, unknowingly, is referring to changes which only will come about if we are going to change the way in which we talk. Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is neither conducive to learning about verbal behavior nor is it helpful in teaching or in relationship. The following quote addresses the feedback, which is only happening if we engage in ongoing SVB, but which is absent in NVB. “The study of grammar would move from surveys of contexts and corresponding forms to surveys of contexts and corresponding effects on audience members—and to feedback loops through which audience reactions would in turn affect the speakers’ verbal behaviors. That is, within language training programs, in general, importance would tend to shift from form to function, a more powerful analytical approach to linguistics that is made possible by the emergence of the necessary basic science.” Although Fraley doesn’t write that we need a different way of talking, one could read into his writing that a different way of speaking is, of course, absolutely necessary.

Fraley addresses the importance of “scientific manuscripts coining new terms that they can then define with the necessary precision.” SVB and NVB are precisely such new terms, which are not only parsimonious and pragmatic, but also enjoyable. A couple of behaviorists, who haven’t talked with me, but who have written a comment on my writings, have referred to SVB and NVB as: two big bags of verbal behavior with fuzzy boundaries. Such a dismissive description is to be expected from those who don’t engage in a real conversation with me in which they would be able to find out there is nothing fuzzy about these two universal patterns of verbal behavior.

In spite of their great emphasis on scientific terminology, most behaviorists completely ignore the two most obvious ways of talking occurring in every society around the world. The reason that this continues – and it is going to continue to happen – is because behaviorists, (Fraley is no exception) view written scientific terminology to be more important than spoken communication. They all slavishly follow and try to imitate Skinner, who “found it necessary to coin several new terms when writing Verbal Behavior.” However, while “tinkering with Skinner’s analysis” and “extending it”, they never pay any attention to how Skinner, the speaker, sounds and to the, in my opinion, obvious fact that he mostly engages in SVB and, therefore, is experienced very differently by the listeners, who are mostly conditioned by NVB speakers. Most behaviorists lack the self-management skills which allow Skinner to talk as he does.

As the following example illustrates, the saying: it is not what you say, but how you say it, is lost on most behaviorists. “Let us consider a typical kind of example, pertinent to the analysis of a verbal episode, that often arises in the teaching context: From the behaviorological perspective, a speaker, in response to certain antecedent stimuli, exhibits a verbal utterance. A listener then responds in some way that provides consequences of that utterance. That consequation, which the speaker contacts as a result of the listener’s response, alters the controlling function between the speaker’s verbal behavior and the antecedent stimuli that originally evoked it—a change that tends to be revealed on future occasions of the speaker’s encounter with those stimuli. These events collectively exemplify the familiar operant conditioning process.” Due to their conditioning history with NVB, most behaviorists, like most of their students, are literally tone-deaf. Of course, “a verbal utterance” has a sound. The speaker’s sound determines whether the students want to listen to him or to her. Fraley, like so many of his colleagues, continues to erroneously believe that he is up against “superstitious students who were long committed to the assumption that bodies behaved in response to the will of implicit spirits called selves in secular contexts and souls in more spiritual contexts.” Regardless of their knowledge about behavior, behaviorists will not be effective as long as they teach with NVB.

It is not a matter of supplanting “such mysticism with concepts of scientific naturalism”, but whether one possesses the necessary skills to be able to model (like Skinner unknowingly does) the difference between NVB and SVB. Fraley (as so many other behaviorists), complains about the challenge he faces as a teacher, since he fails to acknowledge that he engages in NVB each time he feels “frustrated by the intransigence of those resident spirits, especially when they were cast in their religiously inspired soul personas.” Instead of fully recognizing that the student is as conditioned by NVB as the teacher, Fraley gets frustrated with his student’s responses. In effect, he unknowingly blames his students for having NVB, while he himself engages in it. Moreover, as he presumably is the knowledgeable teacher, he unknowingly sees himself as the SVB speaker.

My Fifth Response to Fraley

Dear Reader,

This is my fifth response to “On Verbal Behavior: The First of Four Parts” (2004) by Lawrence E. Fraley. Understandably, following Skinner’s example, the vast majority of behaviorists (Fraley included) insist on what has by now been proven to be the totally futile attempt of replacing “the traditional terms that are adopted from common language” with precise scientific terminology. It has been an enormous waste of time and effort and continues to make behaviorism unpopular. Moreover, the real issue, the difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), never got any attention.

When a student hears a teacher engage in NVB, he or she will “at once” assume “the presence of an internal but often incorporeal mental agent that initiatively generated whatever vocal behavior was exhibited.” With NVB teaching, the verbally-fixated teacher (who is not listening to him or herself while he or she speaks and is not considerate about the poor listening student, who has to put in a lot of effort to be able to understand the teacher) confirms rather than dissolves the student’s belief in “that mystical perspective”, in which, presumably, “the speaker was more than the body that spoke; the speaker was the mysterious agent within who made decisions about what that body would say.” To put it bluntly, the student who hears the NVB teacher explain, against all conditioning, that there is no behavior-causing self, is bound to think the teacher is talking out of his or her ass!

Students of behaviorism, after they have listened to their lecturing NVB teacher, may eventually acknowledge that “the term listener was often interpreted as an internal agent that, in a more or less autonomous way, considered a speaker’s statement and initiatively decided upon an appropriate reaction.” However, unknowingly or knowingly, they still feel oppressed, and, they will try to counter-control their aversive teacher, who pontificates about “the natural science alternatives to” their “common superstitious indulgences.” Many of them will still adopt the preferred “new technical terms that would not as readily evoke such superstitious miscarries”, but the issue of NVB was never properly addressed. Consider this, dear reader, that behaviorists have never even addressed the forceful way of talking that prevents the dissemination of their science?

I know for sure that you will not be able to read what I have written anywhere else. I truly believe that this emphasis on changing the terminology has done more harm than good. Ernest Vargas may have married the daughter of B.F. Skinner, but, as far as I am concerned, he is just another stubborn behaviorist, who refuses to talk with me. His suggestion to adopt “in courses in verbal behavior at West Virginia University” the “terms verbalizer and mediator in place of speaker and listener,” is just another silly attempt at avoiding to speak more elaborately about the elephant in the room: NVB! It hasn’t been useful at all to change the words “speaker” and “listener” to “verbalizer” and “mediator!” For SVB, we must talk about the speaker as his or her own listener, rather than only talk about the listener who listens to the speaker who is not the listener him or herself.

Although Fraley realizes very well that changing the terminology is not sufficient, he doesn’t tell his readers what else is needed. What is needed is a focus on how we talk, not on what we say, but on how we say it. He writes “The verbalizer is simply the body that exhibits the verbal behavior that is under consideration, and the mediator is the body that behaves in response to the verbalizer’s statement and does so in ways that consequate the verbalizer’s statement. Importantly, by definition, neither of them is anything more. While a number of advantages are gained by adopting these terms, doing so seldom insures that the analytical thought of superstitious students will indefinitely retain the naturalistic perspective.” There is only the way in which students and teachers talk about these matters, but there really is no such thing as “the analytic thought of the superstitious students.”

Fraley knows very well that something is missing in the commonly accepted analysis. This is why he writes “Technical terms can help maintain a naturalistic focus on the subject matter, and that is why they are coined and employed. However, expectations that precisely defined technical terms will keep a student separated from the implications of that student’s own mystical basic assumptions imply a challenge that exceeds the capacity of mere terms.” He acknowledges that something more than terminology is needed to “keep a student separated from the implications of” his “own mystical basic assumptions,” but since he doesn’t know what it is, he can’t tell his reader what it is. I know what it is: SVB is needed to teach behaviorism.

Supposedly You Already Know SVB

Dear Reader,

Supposedly, you don’t have any Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), but, if that was true, why aren’t you talking with me and having Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)?? Most people who read this will not talk with me, as they refuse to recognize the truth of these written words while speaking with me. I can recognize the difference between SVB and NVB. Those, who like, me are also familiar with the SVB/NVB distinction, will immediately recognize anyone who claims to have SVB, but in fact engages in NVB. It is because we recognize the great difference between SVB and NVB that we can afford not to get involved anymore in NVB. I see no value in having a confrontational conversation (which would be NVB!) to point out someone’s NVB. In the past, I had many of such conversations, which never went anywhere and left me depleted. Even after learning about the difference between SVB and NVB, for a long time, due to my dreadful history of conditioning, I couldn’t resist the temptation of trying to let all NVB speakers know that, although they engage in NVB, they could also be SVB speakers and I got myself in trouble again and again and again…

Now, I can leave the NVB speakers alone, as I have found that writing about them is safer and more effective. By writing about people, who, as communicators, are each other’s environment and either allow each other to have SVB or force each other to have NVB, I am able to distance myself from the abusive NVB speaker. A certain selection process has begun to reveal itself: only by maintaining my distance from NVB and by engaging in SVB, could I get and remain clear about the difference between SVB and NVB.

The spoken analysis of how we as human beings interact is a dangerous affair due to which many have lost their lives. Since we mainly engage in NVB and seldom in SVB, we are all conditioned by and expecting a punitive, threatening way of talking. Forceful behavior control, which always goes hand in hand with NVB, can be replaced by positive behavior control with SVB, but for that to happen, we have to become aware about how aversive control always elicits equally aversive counter-control. Stated differently, anytime we directly try to stop a speaker from having NVB, we ourselves engage in it and create more of it.

All NVB speakers are NVB speakers – and most likely will remain NVB speakers – not, as is often suggested, because they have decided to be NVB speakers, but because they are repeatedly in environments which aversively affect them. If NVB speakers would be able to spend enough time in aversive-free environments, they would naturally and effortlessly become SVB speakers. This behavioristic knowledge is absent in our culture and thus, we keep blaming each other for the aversive contingencies by which we all, to a very large extent, have been and continue to be affected. It is impossible to avoid the horrible consequences of NVB as long as we don’t even understand why we keep engaging in it in the first place. NVB reader, I will continue to write to you and to invite you to talk with me in 2019. When you talk with me, you will notice your NVB can be stopped, you can still engage in SVB.

My Sixth Response to Fraley

Dear Reader,

This is my sixth response to “On Verbal Behavior: The First of Four Parts” (2004) by Lawrence E. Fraley. When a teacher talks WITH, and, therefore, connects with, the students, the students experience and know very well that such a teacher is, of course, totally different from the teacher who talks AT them, who, therefore, disconnects from them. Students tell me some teachers are better than others, but they have never told me another teacher created Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) in their class-room like I do. I don’t write this to brag, but I want you to know my students tell me this every semester.

If students are given the opportunity to speak (as they are in my classes), they divulge their other teachers are sadly mainly engaging in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). They even ask me to teach their other teachers to have SVB with them. Furthermore, they tell me how surprised they are, as they effortlessly and joyfully learn more in my class than in any other class. Also, many of them express a sense of relief as well as disbelief about the fact that I don’t punish them. At the end of each semester, they are aware the wonderful learning environment we experience as group, is not magically created by me because I am such a great teacher, but by everyone’s participation in and understanding of SVB.

How different my experience with my students is from someone like Fraley. I appreciate the fact that he is honest about it, but I can tell from his writing that he isn’t successful in connecting with his students. He laments the “superstitious student”, who “already knows, with a certainty born of faith, that a verbalizer would have to be the same mental agent that a speaker is understood to be.” Rather than considering his own forceful way of talking (NVB), Fraley prefers to believe that his students can’t understand behaviorology because of their previous beliefs.

Please, read the following long quote very carefully and realize that the NVB speaker is always blaming the listener for not listening!!! “The instructor who insists that a verbalizer is only a body that exhibits verbal behavior is making that pitch to a student who knows, with comfortable certainty, more about it than that instructor is prepared to concede. As far as that student is concerned, that instructor is constrained by some narrowing rules of scientific logic from moving conceptually into a wonderful and awesome domain where that unfettered student is free to roam. While a natural scientist may view that student’s mystical thinking as forays into a fool’s paradise along paths of self-deception, the fundamentally superstitious student has a different view. Such students interpret their own frequent reversions to superstitious interpretations as their way of keeping a finger on the pulse of reality during their temporary detours into the sadly limited world of natural science, which they are undertaking to gain insights into the often appalling limitations with which natural scientists burden themselves in order to do their necessary if somewhat dehumanizing kind of work. While superstitiously indoctrinated students theoretically can be purged of their superstitious behavior, the necessary programs of reconditioning are typically so intense and so time consuming that the arrangements for them are more characteristic of protracted therapy than of academic instructional programs. As a matter of economy, science instruction, if it is to be effective and efficient within the constraints imposed by traditional instructional operations, must be directed to students who have been kept relatively free of superstitious indoctrination. However, the selection of superstition–free students for programs designed to produce effective scientists is difficult within a superstitious culture.”

Let me now unpack for you what Fraley, the person who supposedly knows how behavior really works, unknowingly, is referring to. Any instructor, who “insists that a verbalizer is only a body that exhibits verbal behavior” and thus, is repeatedly “making that pitch to a student”, is: 1) a verbally-fixated, 2) outward-oriented, and 3) struggling NVB speaker, who doesn’t recognize the simple fact that the sound of his voice has an aversive effect on the listener. Stated differently, Fraley describes a teacher who is struggling to keep the student’s attention. If Fraley directly tells his students (and I have no doubt he does) that their belief in an inner self, who presumably causes a person to speak, is “superstitious”, he is not doing a good job at shaping their behavior.

It is interesting, however, that Fraley admits that the student “knows, with comfortable certainty, more about it than that instructor is prepared to concede.” Fraley, the instructor, the verbalizer, should learn, during the interaction, from his student, the mediator. Such learning will only occur if he is able to receive feedback from his students about how they (probably with eyes glazing over) experience his lecture. This is a very common teacher/parent/couple problem: we want others to listen to us, but we are not listening to ourselves, that is, we engage in NVB.

What now follows is Fraley’s justification for sounding horrible and dominating his listener. “As far as that student is concerned, that instructor is constrained by some narrowing rules of scientific logic from moving conceptually into a wonderful and awesome domain where that unfettered student is free to roam.” (This is comparable to a parent, who would punish a child, but insist that it is for their own good.) “While a natural scientist may view that student’s mystical thinking as forays into a fool’s paradise along paths of self-deception, the fundamentally superstitious student has a different view.” Fraley doesn’t realize that his students, like he himself, already have endured much NVB in their behavioral history and that his teaching is just more NVB.

“Such students interpret their own frequent reversions to superstitious interpretations as their way of keeping a finger on the pulse of reality during their temporary detours into the sadly limited world of natural science, which they are undertaking to gain insights into the often appalling limitations with which natural scientists burden themselves in order to do their necessary if somewhat dehumanizing kind of work.” Due to NVB, Fraley speaks of “the sadly limited world of natural science.” To someone who knows how to engage in SVB, nothing is more exciting and liberating than “the world of natural science.” It is because of NVB that Fraley is basically burdening himself and is apparently only experiencing “appalling limitations.” It is only because Fraley isn’t capable of addressing the SVB/NVB distinction that he would even describe his work as “somewhat dehumanizing.”

I strongly disagree with his analysis, as I know with SVB many things become possible which are simply impossible with NVB. Also, I find it unpragmatic (and appalling) that Fraley and with him legions of behaviorists, when they can’t have their way with pushing behavioristic jargon on people, start using bombastic terms such as superstition, indoctrination and purging of behavior, while, supposedly, we are only talking about conditioning. “While superstitiously indoctrinated students theoretically can be purged of their superstitious behavior, the necessary programs of reconditioning are typically so intense and so time consuming that the arrangements for them are more characteristic of protracted therapy than of academic instructional programs.” SVB is not therapy, but a totally different way of talking!!!

Fraley now makes a ridiculous, elitist’ proposal as he is clearly suggesting behaviorology should perhaps only be for the ‘happy few.’ He writes “As a matter of economy, science instruction, if it is to be effective and efficient within the constraints imposed by traditional instructional operations, must be directed to students who have been kept relatively free of superstitious indoctrination.” There are no such students (!) as we are all, whether we know it or not, admit it or not or are aware of it or not, conditioned by NVB. Fraley seems to realize something is wrong with his statement…“However, the selection of superstition–free students for programs designed to produce effective scientists is difficult within a superstitious culture.”