January 22, 2015

January 22, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

There was a serious debate in the Dutch parliament about the Charlie Hebdo-killings in Paris and the politicians were discussing what could be done to prevent such events from happening in the Netherlands. The politicians tried to communicate, while attacking the leader from what has become Holland’s biggest party, the Party For Freedom (PVV), which claims that the Koran and Islam incites violence and intolerance in its believers.

This writing is not about any particular person or any particular political view. This writing is about the Dutch way of communicating, which, like everywhere else, goes back and forth between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). Although SVB and NVB alternate, the response rate for SVB is much lower than for NVB. During the debate there were a few moments of SVB, but most of the debate was NVB. 

    

The debate started out with some words of SVB sympathy for the politician, who, because he has spoke out against the Islam, has received multiple death threats and lives under constant police protection. Soon, however, there was a switch from SVB to NVB, when the politician stated “Having said that, I must now speak politically.” He then compared the anti-muslim rethoric of the politician to the terrorist themselves by accusing him of “spreading fear”. While qualifying his words, the verbalizer informed the mediators that he was about to say something totally different from what he had just said. And, he surely did. 

Another NVB verbal accusation against the Dutch anti-muslim politician was that he “was spreading hatred with his words” and “although he used different weapons”, in essence, he was “perpetrating violence just like the terrorists.” It is important to realize here, that the accuser was attempting to appeal to SVB as he was asking whether what the speaker had just said “could in any way or form contribute something positive to the problem at hand: the radicalization of young muslims in Holland?” From the view of this writer, this appeal utterly failed, because there was no congruence between what the speaker said and how he said it. What he said referred to SVB, but how he said it was NVB. Moreover, how he said it did what it was meant to do: it upset and offended the anti-muslim politician. Stated differently, what was said covered up the deliberate negative effect of how it was said. The accuser insulted the speaker with how he said it and he effectively accomplished this goal by switching from SVB to NVB. 

         

Given the constant death threats against him and given the fact that he doesn’t advocate violence in any way or form, the anti-muslim politician was obviously very upset about this false accusation, but he was in control of himself and sharply stated “the person who just spoke has a sick mind” and left it with that. Although he defended himself and certainly produced NVB, he then turned to madam speaker and said “it is better under circumstances as these not to speak to the person directly, but to madam speaker” and the moment he did that, his verbal behavior changed from NVB to SVB. He regained his composure by withdrawing from NVB stimuli to the more neutral madam speaker, whose function metaphorically guarantees SVB.

Then an example was given that one can “only fight darkness with light.” Again, the words seemed to refer to SVB, to light, but the nonverbal subtext was an accusation and thus NVB. This was quite obvious to the accused, who then responded calmly, in a SVB fashion, by comparing the Dutch tradition of tolerance and freedom of speech to the light and the recent violence, which according to him derives from the Koran, with darkness or NVB. Although the speaker made his point emphatically and victoriously, he didn’t revert to NVB. Surprisingly, however, madam speaker admonishinged everyone and suggested that “given the many balls that are into play, it is better not to call each other names” and “to stay focused on the content of the debate.” Since this was said immediately following the words that were spoken by the anti-muslim politician, this was not a general cautionary comment, but in fact the exact personal attack she had just said that nobody should make. Her directive remark was meant to put the speaker in his place. However, he hadn’t made any transgression in civility, he didn’t call anybody any names, to the contrary, he had addressed all the indecisive members of parliament together, madam speaker included, and he had held them responsible for the worsening of the situation. 

In a failed attempt to distract the attention from the gravity of the words by the anti-muslim speaker, madam speaker made the supposedly rational appeal to “stay rational”, by urging everyone “to fixate on the verbal.” NVB is based on the false assumption we can decide to stay only rational. NVB is not prevented by trying to keep our cool. This only increases the anxiety and the hostile NVB-tone of the debate continued.

January 21, 2015

January 21, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer has dedicated his life to a particular kind of verbal behavior which he calls Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). He has gone through many ups and downs with his discovery that real human interaction exists and can reliably, repeatedly and more skillfully be differentiated from what goes on in the name of it. He calls the latter Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). It is not anyone’s choice to carry on with NVB and to disregard SVB.

He has had many successes with SVB and based on that there is nothing to prove. Participants in his seminars and students in his class are happy. The fact that he doesn’t have a book, hasn’t published an article, a paper or, doesn’t have a website or an agent, doesn’t make any difference. He has four You Tube videos though. He found something that nobody else did, which, because it is new and special, doesn’t fit with anything we know. 

SVB is not about selling a product, promoting a brand or getting involved in something which will make us more money. There is much more to  human interaction than that. To explore that, we have to sanitize it from our usual objectives. First our NVB has to be stopped. This is not going to be funny or enjoyable; it is actually rather embarrassing for most people as it will confront us with everything we have not been able to talk about. This writer pays the price which others can’t pay. He has the capital and he takes pride in his work. He will continue with SVB as he is not indebted to anyone.

January 20, 2015

January 20, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer 

Dear Reader, 

Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the way of communicating which causes and maintains all our problems, is negatively reinforced, that is, by acting out and by misbehaving, we presumably get what we want. Since everybody is doing pretty much the same thing, we are almost constantly reinforced for our NVB. The instantly gratifying effects of NVB have kept it going since time memorial and from childhood to adulthood to old age. It is no coincidence that old people are often as demanding as children. As a caregiver, this writer once witnessed the helplessness and frustration of family members at the forceful NVB of a husband/father, who depended on his daughter and his wife. 

This writer was at the bedside of this dying man, whose daughter had let him live his last days at her house. His legs could no longer carry him and the only way to get around was in a wheel chair. He would scream and curse at his wife and his daughter and he would demand their help to get him to stand up, which would make him fall to the ground immediately. His wife, who was also temporarily living with the daughter, told me he had always had his way. Although he had been unable to walk for a couple of years, he didn’t believe he was unable to walk and he blamed everyone for imprisoning him his bed. As it was so hard to go against him, everyone gave in and so he actually believed his legs were still good. He was supposedly demented, but when he was feeling at ease, he was conscious, talkative and quite enjoyable. Even till the very end, his wife and his daughter never told him he couldn’t walk. They tried to placate him and calm him down.

It was astounding to see how these two women had been extensions of this man. They also instructed this writer not to tell him that he couldn’t walk and they kept talking with him in a way as if he was still going to get better. The man, however, often opened up to this writer and told him how hard he had worked his whole life to make money to raise his big family. He would often cry and he went back and forth between glorifying the days that he was still on top of things and when he could no longer walk. One moment, he would laugh and talk and recall his happy life, but at another, he would shut down and scream and curse uncontrollably, swing his arms wildly and say the most horrible things about his wife and his children. He refused to take anti-anxiety medication and scolded the nurse, who was trying to make him see the benefits of it. 

Upon entering his room, this writer asked how things were going and he’d say “Hit me over the head with a baseball bat and get this damn thing over with” and burst out laughing. The daughter and his wife would hear this and get upset with him for saying that and they would again get into another ugly argument him. One day the daughter tried to tell her father what she really felt about his abusive behavior, but when she did, she was screaming at him while he was lying still in his bed. It was terrible. When she was done, he  he sat up in his bed and told her that he was getting up. Afraid that her father might fall out of bed, the daughter pushed him back and he hit her hard and told her not to stop him. This writer stepped in and the old man made it seem as if he was swinging his fist at him, but he was only jokingly gesturing. He said he was proud he had made his daughter back off.

This dying old man is a good metaphor for NVB. He had been nasty and bossy and demanding his entire life and so had his wife. This didn’t mean, however, that there was no love, no Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). The only few moments of SVB was when other family members were around, just sitting there and letting him be the center of attention. Only then was there enough comfort for this old man to enjoy himself and be at peace. This exactly describes what is needed for us to have SVB. If all the family members would have been able to let him have SVB more often, they would have had it more often as well, but since they didn’t know about SVB, they kept on going with NVB to the very end. 

In every seminar this writer has given there were individuals who demand more attention than others. By giving attention to those who asked the most attention, this writer was able to discover that SVB always generalizes from those who need the most attention, to those who need it less. 

Back in the days, in the family in which he grew up, this writer's demanding father also always needed to be the center of the attention. His inability to give his father what he wanted led to disapproval, rejection and abandonment. Similarly to the situation with the dying man and his wife and daughter, this writer failed to please his father. His failure was his father’s success. His father’s NVB could only continue because his wife tried to please him with SVB. As the oldest son, this writer tried the hardest to gain his approval and consequently he failed. Other family members failed as well, but not as bad as he did. It is probably because of his failure that he discovered SVB. 

While reading the book "Running out of Time" this author understood that SVB is explained by the conditioning effects of the "backward chaining procedure" (Ledoux, 2014, p. 321). Various “explicit and directly accessible behaviors” can be viewed as a chain of preceding behaviors which ends with SVB. In backward chaining, we link stimuli and responses into a chain, but, unlike the forward chaining procedure, we start at the end of the chain and work our way forward towards the beginning of the chain. Our final SVB response comes about due to “evocation training” in which Voice II, which at first is an unconditioned stimulus, later becomes a conditioned stimulus. We produce Voice II without learning, when we are feeling safe, calm, at ease and happy. Each time an aspect of an earlier SVB response is reinforced in the presence of this Voice II-stimulus, this stimulus becomes an evocative stimulus for the SVB response. We describe this as “the dual functioning of a stimulus”, that is, Voice II functions as a reinforcing stimulus, but also an evocative stimulus. Thus, the Voice II-stimulus “becomes a conditioned reinforcing stimulus that can condition another response by following the other response.” (Ledoux, 2014, p.322). Moreover, “When it follows the other [SVB] response, which it reinforces, it also evokes the orgininal [SVB] response.” (Ledoux, 2014, p.322) (text and italics added). So, SVB starts with the reinforcing effects of a Voice II-stimulus, which is produced by the one who is teaching SVB. The reinforcing effects of Voice II are experienced by the verbalizer as well as by the mediator. The longer the chain, the more reinforcing opportunities we have and the more pronounced the evocative effect of the Voice II-stimulus, which is also produced by others, will be. 

So, initially, there is only the Voice II-stimulus of the teacher, who is the verbalizer. The mediator, who becomes the verbalizer, will then recognize his or her own voice as a Voice II-stimulus. This generalization process can be enhanced if more mediators become verbalizers and experience their voice as a Voice II-stimulus. However, the SVB that will begin to occur is limited to the extent that new SVB verbalizers don’t have enough ways of describing it to keep it going. Each time the new verbalizer describes it or hears others describe it, it becomes easier for everyone to continue it. This is why toward the end of each seminar all the participants fluidly express SVB. What was rehearsed was enhanced and enhanced, until it went by itself. After enough backward chaining, SVB happens effortlessly.

When this writer stumbled on SVB, he was surprised how easy it was to lose it. One moment it was there and the next it was gone. At that time in his life this writer was often by himself and so he was able to go back into his room where he would re-establish the voice which, according to him, sounded good. After he had done that, he would again go to others and try to have conversation with them with that voice only to lose it again. Again, he would go back to his room to listen to his self-talk and he let himself know what happened. Also, while talking with others and while developing early versions of SVB, he would receive agreeable feedback from others about what had happened with him. So, it was both the feedback he was able to give to himself, but which didn’t occur when he was with others, but it was also the feedback which did occur when he was with others with whom he was discovering the beginnings of SVB.

January 19, 2015

January 19, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader, 

 

Before we can define Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), we must first define Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) from which it emerged. Just as our verbal behavior emerged from our nonverbal behavior phylogenetically, that is, over the course of our evolutionary history, as well as ontogenetically, that is, over the course of our life time, so too does our SVB arise from our NVB. The hungry nonverbal child cries and produces an early version of NVB, but when it is fed and comforted, the parent is delighted by the sound of its well-being and proud of its verbal behavior development.  Similarly, our cat comes to sit with us on our lap and reinforces with its purring sound our petting behavior. The cat’s body was changed by our petting and will produce loud-sounding, repetitive behaviors in the absence of our willingness to cuddle it. All babies and cats behave in this manner. Like nonverbal animals, humans avoid pain and stress and behaviors which make it go away are negatively reinforced. 

As we don’t look at our behavior from an operant perspective, we fail to see of what our arguing, coercing, screaming, complaining, fighting, retaliating, defending, attention-grabbing, obsessing, hoping, dramatizing, intellectualizing, harassing, weight-gaining, drug-using, tv-watching, book-reading, competing, pretending, manipulating, torturing, bragging, posturing, distracting, stressing, escaping, undermining, praying, destroying, doubting, failing, isolating, rejecting and self-defeating behavior is a function. All NVB is negative reinforced.

Since we don’t pay attention to functional relationships, we don’t make the distinction between SVB and NVB, but once we do that, it becomes easy to see our persistence on NVB is because we don’t know how to have SVB. Just as autistic children may manifest self-injurious problem behaviors, such as biting, hitting, head-banging or eye-poking, which are functionally related to task difficulty, attention-seeking or dislike for a person or a place, individuals who are not afflicted by autism, suffer from a similar inability to express their needs verbally and effectively, in such a way that they can be met. There is no difference between the autistic child, who succeeds in getting the attention from his parents with self-injurious behaviors and the NVB verbalizer, who is mediated by the NVB mediator. The parents of an autistic child inadvertently reinforce its problem behaviors in the same way as NVB mediators perpetuate the NVB of the verbalizer and themselves as verbalizers.

The lack of communication skills of an autistic child is a little more apparent than the lack of communication skills of the NVB verbalizer, but once we begin to distinguish between SVB and NVB, it becomes apparent that we keep recreating problems with our NVB as don’t know how to communicate in such a way that we don’t do this. No matter how successful people seem to be in getting away with their NVB, a more accurate analysis by this writer has time and again revealed that it is primarily a function of our lack of communication skills. In SVB, we communicate in a better way and anyone who has made the distinction between SVB and NVB has agreed on this. However, more than agreement is needed to learn SVB.  

January 18, 2015

January 18, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, a person living in the United States….

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer had a dream in which things were remembered and then again forgotten. It was not clear what things were remembered and which things were forgotten, but this writer figured there just wasn’t enough reinforcement to be able to remember what had been forgotten.

After rereading some of his writings this writer didn’t like them as much as while he was writing them. Obviously, there is a difference between writing and reading what he had written. Although the writing made the reading possible, the writer and the reader seem to be having a different behavioral history. The writer wants to keep on writing and this writing is also based on the fact that this writer finds it reinforcing to write. But, the reader is having a different opinion. He finds it not always very interesting. Sometimes he doesn’t want to read it, because he has already read it.

Today, this writer is thinking and writing about the dialogue he is having with the reader. Since he is mostly his own reader, he is commenting on what he has written. It seems to this writer that this process is very different from when a speaker is listening to him or herself. Speaking and listening happen simultaneously in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), but writing and reading are more likely to happen in succession. It happens that writing and reading come closer together at times, but for this writer this joining happens more often with his speaking and listening. The reason for that is that the latter is a more flexible process; speaking and listening is more flexible than writing and reading. Academia still adheres to the notion that writing and reading is more important than speaking and listening, but this writer wants to change that.

Much of what this writer writes is not based on the reinforcement from the reader. Most of what he writes is based on the fact that he likes to write, regardless of what the reader, other than himself, thinks of it. He still hopes that readers other than himself will one day read his writings and like it. This often forgotten thought reinforces him to write. Although he writes because he likes to write, he doesn’t write because he likes to read his own writing. He would rather like others to read and respond to what he writes.

It is strange that so much conversation can go on, without someone else, other than this writer as his own reader, taking note of it. This writer knows that such private conversations occur in many people, but he is sure that they happen more in him than in others. That is why he uses this writing as an outlet, because he doesn’t like to have these troubling thoughts. This writer is referring to his Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) private speech, which is the consequence of NVB public speech. If, there was more Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) public speech, he would have more SVB private speech, but that is unfortunately not the case. This writer feels SVB deprived because he knows the difference between SVB and NVB and according to him NVB happens almost all the time everywhere. 

This writing is this writer’s way of continuing his SVB. In recent times, he has done much more writing because he found that writing is more often possible than having a SVB conversation with someone. One goal of this writing is to have more SVB conversation in the future. He wants to change people, because he knows it is possible. He can’t think of anything else.