January 17, 2014

January 17, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Today's letter-type euphemia was chosen to see how it effects this author’s writing. Euphemism comes from the Greek word euphemia, meaning “the use of words of good omen”, which is derived from root-words eu, “good or well” and pheme “speech or speaking”, meaning glory, flattering speech or praise. Etymologically (study of the history of words, their origins, how their form and meaning have changed over time) eupheme is the opposite of blaspheme (evil-speaking). The term euphemism itself was used by ancient Greeks, meaning “to keep a holy silence” (speaking well by not speaking at all.) This fits quite well with this author’s goal of explaining Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).

It must be pointed out here that “holy silence”, or whatever that means, can’t be considered as speech. Silence only makes sense in relation to the words that are spoken. If there are no words or, rather, if there are no sounds, then there can't be any silence either.  Secondly, absence of words doesn’t mean silence. A silence in which one “speaks well by not speaking at all” is a forced silence. Such a silence may signify the absence of public speech, but doesn’t imply the absence of private speech. Thirdly, in NVB people understand silence as the absence of speech, but this view leaves out important conditions, which influence the quality of the silence, particularly the quality of silence during our speech. The fact that silence was elevated to “holy silence” and is equated with “not speaking at all” prevents perception of silence during speech. Effects of silence during speech are not well understood. 

Fourthly, in SVB, silence pertains to public and private speech. Absence of public speech can result into absence of private speech, but this isn’t necessarily the case. It can also lead to an increase in private speech. In the presence of incessant public speech, we often experience relief from the pressure that it put on us. Private speech gives evidence of this, when we describe to ourselves the calming effects of being alone again. This raises the question: of what kind of private speech is  this calming effect a function? Obviously, it is a function of negative, not positive private speech. The pressure that we experienced in our public speech is typical for NVB. In SVB there is no such pressure.

In SVB positive public speech maintains positive private speech. The idea of becoming silent inside of ourselves doesn’t arise, because SVB allows us to be quiet with others. Positive private speech, which we experience after we move away from SVB public speech, doesn’t need to be quieted down. Although it never was, NVB public speech needs to be calmed down. Since people were silenced and shamed for expressing such ideas, they became part of their NVB negative private speech. In conclusion, SVB reveals that any insistence on “holy silence” was in fact always preceded by NVB public speech. 

      

Public NVB caused private NVB and NOT the other way around. The latter is based on our ancient belief in an internal causal process, but SVB refutes this unscientific perspective. Without public NVB there would be no private NVB. If public NVB could be stopped once and for all, there wouldn’t be anything to stir private NVB with. If experiencing silence during our conversation is our objective, we need to deal with our communication differently than trying to shut each other up.

January 16, 2014

January 16, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is a different language than Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It is useful to view it as another language, because this gives us a better sense of what is needed to make it possible. We know NVB, our native language, through and through. NVB is the language we are used to. SVB, on the other hand, is like learning a second language. One language isn’t better than the other and SVB isn’t better than NVB. However, the tendency is to think that SVB is better than NVB, but this is because we are familiar with NVB.

Our emotional bond is stronger with our mother tongue. Looked at from SVB, that is, from a novel verbal community, we develop and become more rational, by moving away from our emotional attachments.  Yet, SVB doesn’t claim to be better than NVB, it just is different. The difference is commonly referred to as the difference between being emotional or being rational. This distinction can often not be made because we are unfamiliar with the SVB/NVB distinction. In NVB we pretend to be rational when we are emotional. There are multiple verbal communities we can become part of, but whether that is going to happen depends on our ability to move away from NVB. 

Learning a new language is easier while living among those who speak it, but here comes the problem: SVB isn’t known and there is no place where it is spoken. SVB is a new language. Its newness is experienced as in learning a second language. It is hard to believe we don’t know it, because we are so familiar with its verbal aspects, but we don’t know the nonverbal portion of it. Yet, we did experience instances of SVB. They occurred in spite of our struggle, our verbal fixation and outward orientation. SVB isn’t accidental, but deliberate. Once we know it, we can replicate those instances in which it happened. 

It isn’t possible for us yet to replicate SVB, because we didn’t know what was needed to make it happen. All we remember is that we were feeling well, that we were having fun, that it was easy, and that there was positive energy. Since we have been deprived of SVB and since we would like to think of ourselves as already capable of it, we attributed the SVB which we experienced, to either ourselves or to the people, who were part of it, who made it happen. In each case, we attributed SVB to internal values held by ourselves or by others. 

Supposedly, someone was smart, friendly or patient, or someone else was mean, deceitful or crazy.  What was missing from this picture is that we can only be that way if circumstances permit it. In other words, nobody really is what they believe they are. They can only be that way in a certain situation. Indeed, our much-overrated sense of autonomy depends on our environment. In societies in which this isn’t reinforced different behaviors are observed. This fact about human behavior also holds for schizophrenics. They too only believe and have been made to believe that they are mentally ill, but as anyone who works with them and observes them closely knows, mental illness is only present under certain circumstances, but absent under other circumstances. Once we have SVB this behaviorist knowledge will dissolve ways of thinking which prevented us from understanding that we are determined by environments, by other human beings. 

We consider storms and rains as environmental events. We may think of our cities, neighborhoods and homes as environments in which we live, but we don’t usually consider human beings as our environment. And, even more less likely, do we consider the environment within our own skin, to which only we have access. We are so environmentally unfriendly because we are so disconnected from each other and from ourselves that we don’t even see this.  

The spoken communication in which our verbal and nonverbal expressions can become and can remain aligned is a communication in which emphasis is placed on our nonverbal expression, on how we sound. This nonverbal focus brings attention to the experience which we have while we speak. In SVB we experience joy. This joy is known by the way that our body responds. If we can’t feel it, it simply isn’t there. Nobody of the thousands of people with whom this author has experimented wasn’t able to experience the joy of SVB. There is hope for everyone, even for the most traumatized, stubborn, aggressive, psychotic, suicidal, dissociated and fanatic among us. SVB has affected everyone who came in contact with it and it will continue to do so.

The nonverbal, as indicated by this author, relates to what is not articulated in language, but in sound, facial expression, gestures, and movements. This author focuses on sound, because the human voice played a prominent role in his behavioral history. Years of classical singing and listening to his voice created an awareness of his sound which couldn’t have happened in any other way. It is due to this background that the author was inclined to listen more closely to his speaking voice. He found that self-listening had an immediate effect which was caused by the way in which he sounded. He couldn’t at first believe that something so simple could have such big effect.He calmly spoke with himself for hours and was able to say what he had wanted to say. Words kept coming and he listened to what he had to say to himself. There was no preference for any particular aspect of himself because he was listening to how he sounded. When he sounded good, his speech was orderly and coherent, but when he no longer liked his own sound, his thoughts and feelings became chaotic and fragmented. When he produced coherent words again, he sounded good again.      

January 15, 2014

January 15, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

Can you, who reads this writer's writing, understand what this writer wants to and has to say? Can you be a listener instead of a reader? Can you hear the tone of what he is trying to say? Can you acknowledge the immense difference between what is said and what is written? Can you go back from written words to spoken communication, to identify what must be said instead of written? If this is possible and this author thinks it is, we must speak about matters which so far have only been written about, but which have not been spoken about. If speaking about writing is necessary, then what people were writing about was an attempt to say something.

We really had wanted to talk, not to write. We only wrote, because talking was not possible. If talking would have been possible, we wouldn’t have written. We write because talking was dismissed and devalued. Talking is too overwhelming, too confrontational, too much in your face, too intrusive and causing too much trouble, but writing is convenient, easier to be ignored, because it is incapable of creating what only talking can create. We have settled for writing instead of speaking, because writing allows us to be who we think we are or rather, who we believe to be. Speaking forces us to rethink and change who we are and become who we can be. The force of speaking comes from the immediate confrontation with others which is missing in reading. Writers aren’t the so-called introverts, who don’t dare to speak. They are speakers who aren’t listened to. Writers aren’t at fault for wanting to speak, but listeners are at fault for not being able to  listen. When reader’s limits are slightly pushed, they no longer read. 

Why do we have sayings “he is like an open book” or “you can’t judge a book by its cover?” It must mean something to the reader. If the reader misses its meaning it is not this writer’s fault. The person who has no secrets, who lets you know what he or she is thinking or feeling, is like an open book. An open book is a book that can be read. The writer can’t make the reader open the book. How can you know what words mean by merely looking at them? Reading is more than just looking. Reading is privately speaking. Unless you think the words you read, you don’t and can’t understand them. The writer doesn’t make the reader think. The reader does the reading. The reader decides to think or not. This author has thought these words and has written them down, but it is up to the reader to read and to understand them. 

These words won’t have any meaning if they are not read by someone. To get to the meaning of these words, the reader must be willing to understand that this writing is about speaking. Speakers who push and challenge the limits of their audience are no longer listened to as well. Changing the way we think is about real communication and when we don’t allow it, communication is no longer possible. Instead, some watered down version of real communication, some written version of it, takes over the role of real human interaction. The written version of our spoken communication sets the stage for how spoken communication is supposed to be, but this limited version of how we interact during real interaction is bound to show many problems. 

One big problem is that we want to say more than what was written or what can be written. We wouldn’t be communicating if we didn‘t want to say more than what was already written. If what was written was all there was to be said, everything that was said was predetermined, but in our spoken communication things are less predetermined than in our writings. There are less restrictions on what we say than on what we write. Restrictions on what we say which were derived from what was written, are easier to break than restrictions on what we write that were derived from what we say. It is easier to be alive in our spoken communication than to be alive in our written communication. 

Spontaneity is lost more easily by a writer than by a speaker and is also more easily to be found back by a speaker. We look into the writings of others to find back our spontaneity, but we would be much better off if we looked for friendly speakers to re-connect us with our spontaneity.

Speakers will argue with their listeners to the point that listeners will become speakers. When listeners have become speakers, then speakers will also become listeners. As both are necessary for communication to happen, it is easy to see how difficult this is too be accomplished in written language. How often did it happen that readers became writers because they were challenged by writers? And, equally important, how often did writers become readers again? How often were the words that were written by others having such an effect on them that instead of speaking and writing, they were again listening and reading and understanding something new? It didn’t happen that often. Writing and reading hasn’t changed the course of human interaction as much as we often think it has. If it did, it was because we were reading about writers and readers who were speaking with and listening to each other. Since this seldom happens, there really isn’t that much to write about. Thus, we prefer writers over speakers and we imagine writers to be speakers, when in fact most writers aren’t allowed to be speakers anymore. The writer’s arguments are arguments that writers mainly have with themselves. They are not the same as spoken arguments.  

January 14, 2014

January 14, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

In spoken as well as written communication it is apparent when the listener is attracted to the speaker and when the reader is attracted to the writer. In the former, the listener will keep on listening and in the latter, the reader will keep on reading. What follows is that the speaker can keep on speaking and the writer can keep on writing, because what is talked about is reaching the listener and what is written is well-received by the reader. It is due to the understanding listeners that the speakers are invited and encouraged to speak and due to appreciative readers that the writers are stimulated to write.

More and better speaking and writing depends on whether what was said led to more speech and whether what was written contributed to better speech. There may have been an initial effect due to which listeners spoke more, after they had heard what was said, which later, however, caused them not to say anything at all. A similar effect can be observed in readers, who are excited to read more by the same author, but who may eventually not read anything by that author at all if he or she is not able to come up with something new. 

Listeners and readers expect and demand familiarity, but lose interest if the format of the speaker or the writer becomes too predictable. Even though one may lead to the other, newness of spoken language is much less appreciated than newness in written language. The newness of spoken language doesn’t translate too well to written language. We have humor, but jokes on paper have a stale quality compared to spoken ones. To expect newness in speech from the newness in writing is like expecting a rock to fall upwards. Such an expectation is against what we know. Newness in speech makes writing look dull.   

   

There is lawfulness to our verbal behavior which is similar to gravity. Spoken speech causes newness in writing. Speech is like the earth and writing is like a stone. Just as the stone falls to the earth, written words fall onto spoken language. Written language has to do that because it came from spoken language; what goes up must come down. Once we come down from our fixation on written words and stop trying to invent the verbal wheel, we will be able say and write new things. Moreover, we  acknowledge when the verbal aligns itself with the nonverbal. 

Written language is of course more verbal than our spoken language. The chances of written language to express alignment are small, because words have to be used to in such a way that they don’t cover up or distract from the nonverbal.  However, when the verbal explains and reinforces the nonverbal, our words become weightless and transparent. In such a speech words are spoken as sounds which are, produced by our relaxed bodies, which are sensitive, fine-tuned instruments of sound. In SVB we embody communication, because our words resonate with our body. If our resonance is lost we experience anxiety and fear, but when we hear the sound of our own fear and we notice our own NVB, because we listen to ourselves while we speak, we are able to effortlessly return again to our SVB. 

NVB makes us want to get out of here, while SVB makes us want to be here. The sound of our voice is in the here and now. Listening takes place in the here and now. When we listen to ourselves while we speak, we are conscious communicators, but when we don't listen to ourselves while we speak, we can’t help being unconscious mechanical communicators. Thus, we either are unconscious or conscious due to how we speak. Moreover, in SVB we know we are conscious and others know it too, but in NVB we don’t know we are unconscious and others don’t know it either