October 26, 2016

October 26, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Today I respond to “The Power of the Word May Reside in the Power of Affect” (2007) by Jaak Panksepp. I am grateful to this researcher who once responded very positively to me in an email. His friendly advice was to “keep tilting the soil of affective neuroscience.” I have read many of his papers and also his book “Affective Neuroscience”.

In this paper Panksepp agrees with Shanahan’s “emotion-based view of the evolutionary and developmental basis of language acquisition.” Of course, he mentions Shanahan’s views to support his own perspective. I write about Panksepp’s work to illustrate the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).

Panksepp states something unusual for a neuroscientist: “The transition from non-linguistic creatures to linguistic ones may have required the conjunction of social-affective brain mechanisms, morphological changes in the articulatory apparatus, an abundance of cross-modal cortical processing ability, and the initial urge to communicate in coordinate and prosodic gestural and vocal ways, which may have been more poetic and musical than current propositional language.”

Only SVB, which is mutually reinforcing, is based on this “initial urge to communicate”, but NVB is language that is without poetry and music. I appreciate this great neuroscientist and psychologist and I know that he suffered a great deal from the lack of recognition for his work.

Panksepp states “There may be no language instinct that is independent of the evolutionary pre-adaptations.” Panksepp, Shanahan and I argue against is the dominant “cognitive view of language”, which is based on “neocortically-based language modules” that are in denial of “primary-process emotional systems and the affective states they engender.”

October 25, 2016

October 25, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

A couple of days went by. The cable of my laptop computer had to be replaced. I fell behind on my notes and writings. It is nice to catch up. Although it was stressful to be without my laptop, it was also a good experience. I was thinking a lot without writing about what I was thinking. Now I am thinking again and writing about what I am thinking.

There is something specific I want think and write about today. I read some papers which emphasized that we don’t cause our own behavior. This topic is of utmost importance. Most of us still believe we decide to act this or that way, but behavior is determined by our environment.

When I talk about the environment and how it affects verbal behavior, I mean speakers and listeners. Other speakers and listeners determine if we will engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). As speakers, we can’t by ourselves make SVB or NVB happen. For SVB to happen, the listener and speaker must take turns.

If the speaker and the listener can’t take turns, they will be engaging in NVB. In SVB the speaker invites the listener to become a speaker, but in NVB the speaker prevents the listener from becoming a speaker. The speaker always sets the stage for SVB or NVB, not the listener.

The listener mediates the speaker only if he or she is speaks the same language. Only to the extent that the listener knows SVB can he or she reinforce a SVB speaker. Due to their history of reinforcement most speakers and listeners know more about NVB than about SVB.

October 24, 2016

October 24, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

My ability to distinguish between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is the result of the life I have come to live. Others can acquire my ability too, but they will only be able to do so if they adopt a life-style similar to mine. Although my contact with mental health clients and students is effective as well as pleasant, this contact between experimenter and subject is kept at a minimum.

I am capable of discriminating and separating out stimuli which distract us from perceiving SVB as SVB and NVB as NVB. My personal life is uncomplicated and based on my own level of comfort. I only allow people into my life who can have SVB with me. I am very private. I do what I am capable of and in doing so I am doing what I am good at.

The college situation and the therapy situation allow me to do what I am highly motivated to do. My behavioral history has prepared me to deal with stimuli which many of us seem to consider as uncontrollable. We have been led to believe we cannot change our way of interacting.

Once the SVB/NVB distinction has been made clear it becomes apparent that another way of talking is not only possible, but it is urgently needed. 

As I encourage my clients and students to trace back trouble-some, covert, private speech to the Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), overt, public speech from which it originated, they are relieved, grateful, intrigued and moved to find out that only Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) overt public speech can immediately create positive, covert, private speech, usually referred to as a person’s self-esteem.

October 23, 2016

October 23, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

The first thing a scientist must do to point out the great difference between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) is to create an environment in which he or she controls the conditions that give rise to one of these two universal response classes.

As psychology instructor and as a therapist I see myself primarily as a scientist who provides a stable learning environment. In both jobs I make sure that SVB increases and NVB is decreased. NVB is on an extinction schedule and SVB is reinforced, celebrated and enhanced.

My results are very good. Students write wonderful papers in which they describe how much they learn and enjoy my class and my clients slowly recover from their mental health problems and become happy again. How is all of this possible? I achieve this by changing the way in which we communicate. In doing so I change the way in which we think.

It is inevitable that in class as well as in therapy we go back and forth between SVB and NVB. In class it is at times as difficult as in therapy and in therapy things are as much as matter of studying and learning as in class. As our united focus improves we have more SVB and less NVB.

Even those students and clients who strongly resist and try to distract from it are affected by SVB. It is only a matter of time before they are able to acknowledge this. I calmly build everybody up and I don’t hold their history of conditioning against them. Everybody knows that.

October 22, 2016

October 22, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

As a psychology instructor and therapist I am challenged to check the consequences of my actions. I am grateful to my students and my clients. It is not easy what I do, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love the communication that is involved in the learning process.

A long time has passed in which I was preparing for this and now it is happening. In each of my jobs I have many opportunities to impact others. A college semester lasts about seventeen weeks. Two of my classes take place twice a week for one hour and fifteen minutes and my three-hour-long evening class takes place only once a week.

There is a different effect visible and audible in the day-time classes and evening class. Also, the evening class is more populated by older, returning students. Younger students more often enroll in the day-time classes. The difference for me is the smaller amount of time I spend with day-time students and the longer time with the evening students.

The time I spend with my students and my clients is proportional to the impact I have on them. A therapy session is only forty-five minutes long, but I let it last fifty-five minutes and most clients are seen once a week. However, some clients I even see twice a week and with them more significant changes become possible and are being achieved.

My clients are satisfied with their treatment that is why I am able to work with them for months on end. Those who have been with me the longest achieve the most. As an instructor I interact with the whole class and can’t do individual work; the challenge of being a therapist is that I am only working with one individual and there is only me and him or her.