October 10, 2014

October 10, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

It became a habit for this writer to write at least one page in his journal every day. In the past he made many audiotapes to which he still sometimes enjoys to listen to. Although he realizes that writing is not the same as talking, he has come to enjoy it almost as much as speaking. He hasn’t made his writings public and also his audiotapes were never listened to by anyone. This writer has not published a book or a paper and hasn’t made his audiotapes about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) public.

During class students were talking about video-recording the interaction and putting it on YouTube. This writer would be grateful if someone who knows how to operate this technology could help him with that, but given the fact that people have often said such things in the past and never did anything,  he is not that eager put much energy into it. The best results so far have always come from immediate contacts with people and not from any publications or promotional activities. 

While reading the book “Running Out Of Time” (2014) by Stephen Ledoux, it  occurs to this writer that even this knowledgeable man doesn’t recognize the need to distinguish between written and spoken aspects of the verbal episode. It is odd that this writer, who is so against writing, is now writing about speaking, which can’t be replaced by writing. Yet, under the circumstances that he is currently in, it is easier to write for him than to speak about SVB. This wasn’t always the case and it is interesting to look into why this has changed. 

In recent times, this writer – as a speaker – has so often been acknowledged and validated, that his need to speak and to be validated has dramatically decreased. Before, he had an intense urge to speak, but that urge has calmed down. Also, almost on a daily basis, he receives requests to write about his views. The few times that he let people read his writings, he received positive reinforcement. He now has a better understanding of the possibilities of the written word and is open to reaching people with his writing. Yesterday’s classroom discussion was a direct result of that.   

Class Room Memory Assignment

Discuss in groups of 5 any of the following :

-         What does it take for you to remember?

-         When you forgot something…what happened?

-         Why is it difficult to forget or easy to remember?

-         Where was it that you kind lost it (?)..your mind?

-         When did you find yourself back?

-         When did you forgive and remember the good times?

-         When do positive memories become painful memories?

-         Do you have trouble remembering what is important to you?

-         What does this exercise remind you of?

-         What are your first memories?

-         Can you think of memory without asking yourself a question?

-         What distracts you from remembering your purpose?

-         Why do you always only remember certain things and not others?

-         How are meaning and memory related?

-         How does your emotion effect memory?

-         Does your body remember things..give an example.

-         Does one place remind you of another place?

-         Does music bring back memories?

-         What do you recall about those times in which you felt free?

-         What has being in the moment has to do with memory?

-         Does trauma affect memory? Increase it or decrease it?

-         Is memory a real thing or is it something we imagine?

-         Does someone who is bilingual have two memories for each language?

-         When was the last time that you felt happy that you forgot something?

-         Do we only remember what we want to remember?

-         How does knowledge change memory?

-         Is knowledge memory or is memory knowledge?

Another reason why speaking and listening is much more important than writing and reading, is because reading and writing is always done alone, while speaking and listening is done together. Stated differently,  Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) involves the simultaneous behaviors of the verbalizers and the mediators. During SVB our individual behavior doesn’t matter, because what really matters is how the communicators behave together. During Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), however, it is the individual behavior of either the speaker or the listener, which matters. In NVB, the behavior of the verbalizer and the mediator never matter simultaneously.

This writer had not made this distinction, which is of importance for a functional account about our interaction. It is necessary to describe, explain and predict the behavior of individual organisms, but that description is not sufficient to explain how we behave together while we communicate. Whether we are having SVB or NVB signifies two different worlds, one in which we are at peace, the other in which we are perpetually at war. The consequences of our verbal behavior are far-reaching. When we are unable to analyze how our individual behavior separates us from our behavior together, we lose our sanity. Individual behavior only makes sense in terms of how we behave together. During SVB we make sense of ourselves and each other.

In SVB we notice how we affect our environment and how we ourselves are affected by our environment (by others). Whether we are verbalizers or mediators is not relevant, because in SVB there is turn-taking and thus, we switch back and forth between being a verbalizer and a mediator. Another way of stating this is that our endo-environment and ecto-environment are continuously interacting with each other and that this interaction sets the stage for SVB. However, the lack of interaction between an individual’s endo- and ecto-environment, sets the stage for NVB. Thus, in SVB we adhere to the fact that we exist in one natural environment, but in NVB, we claim the falsehood that we exist in separate idiosyncratic worlds.

October 9, 2014

October 9, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Yesterday evening’s class on memory was an enormous success. For starters, this writer decided not to give his usual quiz. This helped the students to feel at ease. Then, he talked about his own history and his withdrawal from his Ph.D. study in Psychology, after which he discovered that he was a behaviorist. All of this was to stimulate the students to think about their own lives and struggles and to invite them to talk about their memories. The entire class was engaged and many students felt comfortable enough to speak about the events going on in their lives. 

An Iraq-veteran spoke illustratively about his PTSD symptoms. He talked about his recent participation in festivities in the Ardennes to commemorate those who fought and died there in World War II. He had been to similar events in Normandy. He said that although people come there to remember war and terrible loss, over the years, these horrors slowly fade and become replaced by happy memories about the comradery among the soldiers. 

Another student, who had been abused as a girl, questioned what she remembered about herself. All she knew about herself before the age of 10 was what other people had told her and she wasn’t even sure if what they had told her was true. She didn’t get into the details, but it was clear that not knowing what had happened had bothered and frightened her a great deal.  

Other students were so excited about how our discussion about memory related to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) that they proposed to create a video about it and put it on YouTube.  They agreed that they could create new memories for many other people by posting our interaction on Social Media. Something happened in this class. There was a lot of energy in the room and everyone was awake and involved.

Students stated that their classroom discussion demonstrated and proved to the world that SVB is possible and necessary. It seemed as if they suddenly realized that they had the power to change things. One student came to this writer to speak about her former employer. She was still in contact with her and wanted this writer to give a seminar for this big educational organization.

October 8, 2014

October 8, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

It is full moon today and there is nothing this writer can think of to write about. This creates a situation in which he becomes conscious about the fact that usually something is attracting and holding his attention. Because currently this is not the case, a contrast is created. When nothing in particular is asking our attention, we can begin to see where our attention would go, when we are free to let it go where ever it wants to go. In other words, if nothing is already occupying our attention, then what is asking our attention can get our attention. We pay attention to things very differently, when we don’t have to struggle to pay attention. 

Last night this writer had a dream from which he only remembers one thing: he was carried on the shoulders in some sort of victory round and everyone was applauding him and praising him. Since there was nothing for him to do but to relax, he didn’t do anything. He didn’t even wave or smile, but he just enjoyed the fact that others were honoring him. It was a satisfying experience, but there was no recollection about the situation in which this occurred. It seemed as if this celebration and appreciation just burst through, like a ray of sun that broke through the clouds. Suddenly there was this glorious moment of sheer delight.  

It seems to this writer that he woke up this morning different than usual. The thought about the dream he had had would not have occurred if he didn’t let his attention express in writing whatever at that moment came to his attention. If it wasn’t for that, the dream might have been completely forgotten. Many dreams never get our attention, because our attention is not free to express them. 

Something is usually demanding our attention and whatever that might be, this something is something we usually are trying to move away from. Of course, we are talking about aversive experiences, which we rather don’t have. However, we keep having them if we don’t accept the fact that we are having them. By accurately describing them, we understand negative experiences better and we free ourselves of them.  When there is nothing negative to get away from, nothing is preoccupying our attention and we are free to pay attention to whatever is asking our attention.

October 7, 2014

October 7, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

As this writer reads every day a couple of pages from the highly recommended, well-written book “Running Out Of Time” (2014) by Stephen Ledoux, he becomes more and more convinced that although writing has certainly changed a lot of human behavior for the better, that is, we have become more scientific about things, it is very clear that writing didn’t and couldn’t improve human relationship. 

Writings simply lack the independent variable status that make the dependent variable, our spoken communication, manipulable . Our books and scientific papers create and perpetuate the teleological fiction that in some distant future, due to this knowledge, human beings will change their behavior. However, it didn’t happen. 

While educated people think they have an explanation for why things are the way they are, they have forgotten to analyze and have completely ignored the worst problem of society: spoken communication. They may be scientific about many things, but they aren’t scientific about how humans and how they themselves interact with each other. Hope for a better world has been continuously exploited by those who write and distract the attention from variables of spoken communication, which must be analyzed while we speak. 

Academic writings have stopped the conversation and have made us buy into the fiction that we can do something better than talking: read or watch. Mankind’s search for the causal variables, which make us communicate  the way we do, have only led to more papers, more books, more preaching, more written speeches (done by speakers who supposedly do the talking for others), more debates, more sales pitches and more politics. All of this, according to this author, could only increase NVB. 

Written words oppress spoken words. Compared to medicine which cures disease, written words haven’t had much of a healing effect and didn't alleviated the human condition. The reason has always been that written words can't supply the practical contingencies that involve the environment-controlling, verbal behavior-changing technologies. Functional control of how we talk results from environmental change, but, the environment in which we read and write is entirely different from the environment in which we speak and listen. Thus, to change the way in which we talk, we must attend to our environment, that is, to each other, while we speak.  

This author has given hundreds of seminars in which he reliably controlled the behavior of others. During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) all participants get in contact with the real variables which cause them to speak the way they speak. As the participants explore and validate the difference between SVB and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), they are again and again utterly surprised that nobody has ever pointed this out to them. Although, due to certain behavioral histories, it is more difficult to point this out to certain people, SVB is always possible and self-evident. It takes a little while, but everyone who participates understands what SVB is! The same is true for the psychology classes which are taught by this author. As the semester progresses all his students eventually get it and participate more in SVB

SVB and NVB are two existing modes of communicating, which have been observed by people from every culture and from very walk of life. We are used to NVB, but we are deprived of SVB. This doesn’t mean that we don’t know the SVB, but that we haven’t been reinforced for it as much as we have for NVB.  This writer has taught so many different people about it that he knows it is possible regardless of history, for everyone to produce it.  For some it takes more work, but it is always possible.

Ledoux ends Chapter 4 by writing that “hopefully” his text “conditions skeptical sensitivity to scientifically inadequate explanations” (p.133). This writer would never use such language. This writer knows that no written texts will or can ever “prepare” for “adequate explanations of behavior." No writing can or will “condition skeptical sensitivity” of NVB. This writer would never  explain SVB as “Let’s make sure we get things as right as possible”, but he acknowledges that the use of such words stem from a vague and insufficient sense of the inadequacy of writing. 

In SVB we are not “hopefully” conditioning new behavior. Although the future isn’t causing our behavior, one experience of SVB is enough to predict what we are more likely to do under similar circumstances. During SVB we look to our future with great anticipation, because, while we know that we are having it, we are benefitted by recognizing the many possibilities we didn’t know we had. This window gives us hope which we otherwise wouldn’t have. NVB makes our outlook grim and negative. In NVB there is nothing to look forward to. Even if we can call the shots, in NVB the oppressors are as stuck in their behaviors as the oppressed. No matter who we are, as long as we engage in NVB, none of us is having his or her needs met.

October 6, 2014

October 6, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This author spoke with his friend and colleague Arturo from Bogota, Colombia. Arturo asked him how he measures Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)? Since this writer organized a SVB seminar at the local library, there was plenty to talk about. 

Thinking about it today, this author, as the mediator, realizes that his attention simultaneously goes to the nonverbal as well as the verbal behavior of the verbalizer. In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the mediator’s attention  goes to the nonverbal or to the verbal behavior of the verbalizer, but it never goes to both simultaneously. The attention of the mediator only goes to both the verbal and the nonverbal behavior of the speaker during SVB. To the extent that SVB can't occur very often, because environments are fear-inducing,  the mediator is conditioned to reinforce NVB and to engage him or herself NVB as a speaker whenever he or she has the chance to. 

 

The attention of the mediator can only simultaneously go to the verbalizer’s nonverbal and verbal behavior, if the verbalizer’s attention simultaneously goes to his or her nonverbal as well as his or her verbal behavior. This only occurs in SVB. Since this is most of the time not the case and since the verbalizer’s attention is most of the time focused on his or her nonverbal behavior or on his or her verbal behavior, or, and this makes things complex very quickly, since the verbalizer’s attention often switches back and forth between the nonverbal and the verbal (due to the reinforcing effects – which can also be nonverbal as well as verbal – that  are produced by the mediator), the verbalizer is very often unable to simultaneously keep his or her attention focused on both his or her nonverbal and verbal behavior. 

Even though the verbalizer may believe to be very verbal, he or she is in fact very often having a nonverbal effect on the mediator. Even when mediators are allowed to become verbalizers (which is also often not at all the case), they are more likely to respond verbally to something which has impacted them nonverbally or visa versa. 

As the speaker's verbal responses often inaccurately describe nonverbal impact, the conversation goes nowhere because the words obfuscate what the communicators experience while they speak. This is NVB. During SVB, by contrast, communicators stay in touch with themselves and with each other non-verbally as well as verbally .