October 22, 2014

October 22, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

The verbal behavior of most people is most of the time a function of the Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) contingency. Surely, the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) contingency can be created, but, since we don’t know how to maintain it, SVB always comes and goes. SVB is most of the time impossible because there is nothing to make it happen with. Not surprisingly, those who try to create an environment in which SVB is possible are usually the ones who are suffering multiple problems. 

It is the lack of comfort, the inability to handle stress and the refusal to accept the so-called solutions that didn’t work, which sets the stage for SVB. Also, it is the impatience with and the counter-control towards those who are enforcing the falsehoods of NVB, which paves the way for SVB. Furthermore, it is the voice of the powerless, of those who are rejected, fired, locked up, the criminal, insane or addicted, who can’t stand the oppression and insults, which prepares the ground for SVB. 

This writer knows who he has met, he knows why he has met them and he knows how he has met them. His ability to distinguish between SVB and NVB gets him accepted and praised by all the underdogs of this world. It turned out to be this way and he never decided this, but it makes total sense when one thinks of it. There may not seem much unity in the problems that so many people struggle with worldwide, but this writer knows that more togetherness is possible by embracing our problems than by pretending that these problems don’t exist. He is not attracted to problems as such, but to the challenge they present to communicate the real solution. 

SVB is a way of communicating which makes all our problems meaningful. It has often been said that our problems are meaningless, but this is because we have given up on finding meaning during our interactions. Only when we have faced the meaninglessness of our lives do we find out about what is meaningful. This real meaning isn’t about a book, ritual, partner, group, possession, identity, country, family, job, adventure, affair or recovery from addiction. Real meaning is about how we communicate together. During SVB we are communicating meaningfully. 

October 21, 2014

October 21, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer has just read a couple of papers that were written by students from his psychology class. Each paper depicts the individual unique behavioral history of its writer, but what all these papers have in common are the positive experiences these students describe. This inspires this writer to write, but also to teach the way that he is teaching. His teaching emphasizes the importance of spoken communication. He  raises the question: what makes Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) possible? When is it there? What happens when teaching and learning grinds to a halt, when Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) overtakes us? Yes, teacher and student are in this together.

Last night, when this writer came home from his daytime job, he felt so tired that he went to sleep at 6:30pm. In the morning, on his way to Red Bluff, he had been thinking about his family with whom he is no longer in contact and a he was suddenly engulfed by waves of sadness. Although he felt sad, it didn’t feel like a burden, but like a release. When he reached his destination, he felt cleansed by the emotions that troubled him for such a long time. The day went well and when he arrived home, he decided to take it easy. He slept from 6:30 till 1:30 am, which is 7 hours. Then he woke up, read some of the above-mentioned papers and went back to sleep again from 3am till 5:30am, another 2.5 hours. Altogether he slept a total of 9.5 hours. He felt fantastic that he was able to get so much sleep.  

Also, yesterday it was suddenly raining, a weather type which had reminded him of his country of origin, Holland. In addition, the night before yesterday night, he had been listening to songs by a Dutch artist he used to listen to back in the days. When he woke up from his deep sleep, something of the dream he had was still with him. In it, one of his students had said “it is not so much the information which you teach, but how this information is touching my life and the lives of many other students, which makes you an exceptional teacher.” When this writer read another paper after he had woken up, the student had written something which almost sounded exactly identical to what he had dreamed in his dream at night.

October 20, 2014

October 20, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer had a productive weekend: he made holders for the hoses in the front and the back yard, he spread his Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB)message at the Farmer’s Market, he  tilted the soil, cleaned out the garage, went swimming, threw away a bunch of old books and had a very good sleep. Moreover, these activities got him approval from his wife, with whom he went on an early morning hike. 

On top of all that, this writer booked another free seminar at the Chico Branch Library of Butte County on Sunday, November 30, for which he produced a well-written invitation. This writer’s language has much improved. It will be the last time he uses the Library’s Public Room, because after that, in the new-year, he intends to organize his seminars on a bi-weekly basis at his own home.

  

The cleaning out of the garage made enough room to comfortably sit there. He will  use this new space to work on making and scoring quizzes. The books he hasn’t thrown away are now nicely put on shelves. It is a pleasant feeling to have access to the old stuff, which previously was sitting in boxes. He has many old journals and sometimes reads in them. How things are now, is explained by his writings from many years ago. 

After professor Ledoux will retire, Behaviorology most likely will not be represented academically anymore. This writer feels strengthened in spreading the natural science of human behavior, viva voce, the way it was, according to him, supposed to be spread, by word of mouth. SVB explains why Behaviorology was not accepted: we need to become scientific about the way in which we talk. Unfortunately, Ledoux is not open to this and declined this writer's invitation to explore this with him.

It is amazing how knowledge at some point of time is available, but at another point of time seems to have completely vanished. This happens at an individual as well as at a societal level. People get drunk and then they sober up and find that reality is still there waiting to be acknowledged. Although our sciences have spurred great innovations, they didn’t improve our human relationships. The reason for this is simple and straight forward: we didn’t apply science to how we communicate. Only in SVB do the communicators verify if what they say makes sense to others.

October 19, 2014

Sunday November 30, 2014, from 1:00pm to 5:00pm

Free Seminar:

Welcome To Sound Verbal Behavior

With Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Chico Branch of the Butte County Library,

1108 Sherman Avenue, Chico CA 95926

According to the natural science of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), you can say for yourself if it works or not. Once you begin to listen to your own voice while you speak, one of two things is predicted to happen: you like what you hear or you don’t like it. If you like your own sound, you are producing SVB, but, if you don’t like what you hear, you produce Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). As long as you don’t feel good about your own sound while you speak, you produce a sound which elicits a stressed, anxious, angered, frustrated, distracted or threatened response in others. Elicitation refers to respondent behavior, which is innate. The fight, flight or freeze responses, which are characteristic for NVB, are caused by the sound of our voice, which functions as an aversive stimulus. As reflexive behaviors predate the arrival of language, which is a recent event in our evolutionary history, when these autonomic responses release cascades of neurotransmitters, they make social engagement impossible. 

 

It goes without saying or, rather, it will be, based on experimental evidence, apparent to most of us, that sound has always been the mechanism by means of which we communicate our relative sense of safety and well-being with one another. By focusing on how we sound, we can effortlessly improve our spoken communication. Our sound is produced and listened to in the here and now. In SVB, we become conscious or meditative communicators. However, the opposite is equally true: due to NVB we have remained unconscious mechanical communicators. SVB is other-evident as well as self-evident, as we experience what is outside and inside of our skin as one environment. During SVB there is alignment of verbal and nonverbal expression and what we say is made clear and supported by how we say it. SVB is an operant behavior, which can only be acquired due to the safety, care and comfort provided by our environment. Even if we weren’t conditioned to have high rates of SVB, we can still reliably increase our rates of SVB and simultaneously decrease our rates NVB responding. The contingencies of reinforcement for SVB and NVB are mutually exclusive. 

 

Another way of describing NVB and SVB is that in the former we talk at each other, but in the latter we begin to talk with each other. Surely, NVB is uni-directional and SVB is bi-directional; in SVB we take turns being a speaker and a listener, but in NVB we don’t take turns, because we can’t. Thus, SVB is a listener’s or mediator’s perspective of the speaker or the verbalizer. In NVB, mediators fixate on the verbalizer and other-listening excludes self-listening. Only in SVB do we really listen to each other because we listen to ourselves. Ironically, in NVB we coerce others to listen to us, but we don’t listen to ourselves. Bring friends and family, come in time and stay for the whole duration of the seminar so that you can reap the maximum benefits from this life-and-relationship altering, verifiable scientific process. 

Kind greetings,

Maximus

October 18, 2014

October 18, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader,

 

This writer received an email from the behaviorologist Stephen Ledoux, whose book “Running Out Of Time” he is currently reading. Ledoux is involved in what may be his final battle, which he is unlikely to win. Since he is about to retire, he hopes that his behaviorology courses will be continued by psychologists, but as most of them  believe in the agential causation of behavior, the chances that that will happen are slim. This writer believes Ledoux is right: only behaviorologists can teach behaviorology courses. It must be painful to see his life’s work, a total of ten behaviorology courses, be voted out politically. Yet, this is the unscientific world we live in, in which the contingencies for Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) are much more successful than the contingencies for Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). 

According to this writer, however, the supremacy of the contingencies for NVB will not last forever. He has all the proof that, if given the choice, students will almost unanimously choose for the contingencies that make SVB possible. Many of his students have said that a course in SVB should be mandatory for all students. 

The fact that academia hasn’t woken up to SVB doesn’t surprise this writer. When he first read about the science of environment-behavior controlling relations, he  immediately knew it couldn't work as long as our way of talking is not under discriminative control of behaviorology. With all respect for the hard work done by many behaviorologists and behaviorists, their way of talking, like everyone else’s way of talking, is still based on the contingencies for NVB. 

Ledoux's claim “Behaviorology is neither a part of, nor related in any meaningful way to, psychology of any kind!” (p. 182) (Ledoux, 2014), is necessary, but not sufficient to establish a natural science of human behavior. Since everyone in academia is busy with written, but not with spoken words, it hasn’t yet occurred to anyone that to become scientific about human behavior, we need an entirely new way of interacting. This writer’s view that we must talk is vindicated by this temporary defeat of behaviorology. For all their scientific rigor, behaviorologists haven’t analyzed their own adherence to the written word, which has strengthened instead of weakened the contingencies for NVB.