June 27, 2014
Written by Maximus Peperkamp,
M.S. Verbal Behaviorist
Dear Reader,
It happens again and again that this writer hears what other people have been going through is exactly the same as what he went through. This uniformity
should be expected from the science called Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB).
A
person is believed to have achieved literacy when he or she has mastered four
different behaviors, which are learned separately: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Listening and
speaking must be joined for this person to become fully verbal. What this means
is that listening and speaking happen at the same rate and intensity level, rather
than that they occur separately, on different occasions. In SVB, speakers listen while they speak. Also, reading and
writing are ideally joined; the writer reads his or her writing
while he or she is writing, rather than reading after he or she has written or before he or
she has started writing.
The notion that something entirely new can be said, when a speaker
listens to him or herself, while he or she speaks, originates in a stimulus
control which was not operating when we didn’t listen to ourselves while we
speak. Therefore, what we say is a function of how we sound. Novelty of public speech is a
function of listening while we speak. Listening occurring privately, before or
after we have spoken, leads to communication problems in both our public and
private speech.
In SVB public speech, because the speaker listens to him or herself
while he or she speaks, he or she experiences SVB private speech, which only
occurs during SVB public speech. Since SVB private speech is a continuation of
the positive emotions expressed during SVB public speech, we are happy with
ourselves and each other during SVB. However, this happiness doesn’t necessarily result in
positive private speech, it may also results in the total absence of private speech, in silence.
After SVB public speech has occurred, there may be an absence of private
speech. After the accurate expression of our thoughts and feelings in SVB we
become quiet.
In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), in which the speaker listens to himself
before or after he or she has spoken and not while he or she is speaking,
public speech sets the stage for negative private speech. Moreover, public speech is no longer a function of his or
her environment, but it is a function of what this person is saying to him
or herself privately. Although the negative emotions of NVB private speech were learned or conditioned in a negative NVB public speech environment, the NVB
speaker’s public speech is now determined by his or her NVB private speech. Stated differently, the NVB speaker is out of touch with his or her environment.
In
SVB, by contrast, public speech is always function of the environment or, more accurately,
of other people. During NVB, a person’s negative private speech doesn't abate and
therefore keeps setting the stage for NVB public speech. In NVB we can
neither have peace with each nor can we have peace with ourselves. The idea that we should try to change ourselves is the same as the idea
that we should try to change others. However, we only keep thinking that we need to change
ourselves or each other as long as we don’t view SVB as well as NVB as behaviors
which are a function of our environment. There is no inner agent who causes our behavior!
We never individually produce English,
Dutch, or Chinese, but we are part of a verbal community. Likewise, SVB and NVB
are not behaviors we individually chose, but something we always do together.
This writer, who in this writing experiences and enjoys the joining of
his writing with his reading, realizes that most of what has been written is
the product of NVB. NVB reflects the incessant negative private speech of authors,
who wanted to be speakers, who wanted to be listened to and understood, who longed
for SVB, but who didn’t know how to have it. Like everyone else, this writer, based
on his being conditioned by NVB, was also once convinced that expressing his
negative private speech into public was the most important thing to do. He did
this in an attempt to rid himself of his negative emotions, but it never
worked.
In SVB there is nothing to get rid of. The absence of aversive
stimulation creates an environment in which we can communicate like we have
never done before. The only thing that
works is the environment in which SVB is possible.
When we don’t have any back problems, we don’t feel our back, but when
we sprain a muscle, we feel our back all the time. In good health, we aren't even aware that our back is fine. Similarly, our private speech is only about things that we need to watch out for and be careful about. Said differently, private speech is
basically always negative. It warns us for the negative stimuli outside of our skin, in our environment, which we
need to avoid. Why would we want to have back problems? We must be careful when
lifting things and be mindful about how much we can carry. If we try to lift too much weight, we will ruin our backs. NVB weighs us down,
because of our over-involvement with the negative stimuli in our environment. Oddly, in NVB, we
approach instead of avoid such stimuli. Indeed, in NVB, we are getting on each other’s
back. Due to NVB people seem to have lost their backbone. In NVB, we try to carry the weight of the
world or we throw our weight around.
In SVB, by contrast, we have each other’s back. In SVB, we back up and
we find that our verbal expressions are always embedded in our nonverbal
experiences. In SVB, we back out of meaningless, NVB argumentation. In SVB we come back to our senses, because we embody our
language. Coming back to our senses means we perceive safe environments as safe, we avoid and know how to avoid unsafe environments. In SVB, we get back to how we as individual
organisms experience our environment. In SVB, by following the sound of our own
voice, we follow the way back to our own well-being. In SVB, we become aware of
circumstances that once existed, way back, in which we were happy and content.
After SVB, there is nothing to hang on to anymore, not even our positive
self-talk. After SVB, conflicts about who we believe to be completely dissolve, because
SVB makes us one and allows us to experience unity while we speak. We go through many similar
experiences and these experiences are expressed appropriately. SVB
doesn’t lead to positive self-talk, but to absence of self-talk, because there is no self. This however doesn’t mean that we are unconscious. To the
contrary, due to SVB we are conscious and due to NVB we
are unconscious and mechanical.
