June 21, 2014

June 21, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

This writer had many conversations with people whose family members struggle with mental health problems. As he brought their attention to the environmental variables that are possibly causing their behavior, it became clear that there is little chance that we are going to be able to do something about these external circumstances. Most people lack any understanding about the contingencies of reinforcement, which cause and maintain our behavior and which need to be taken into consideration if we want to effectively change problem behavior. By viewing the problems as residing within the person or by saying that he or she is having problems, we are not in the position of helping them. To the contrary, as long as we are thinking and acting from this perspective, we will only make things worse. 

We don’t have the knowledgeable people available to be able to implement the behaviorist' knowledge and to reliably improve human behavior. Fact is, when people are brought to mental health institutions to receive help, they are not obtaining the environmental stimuli which are needed to change their behavior. This writer strongly believes that what is offered only adds to the problem. Generally speaking, mental health professionals reinforce rather than decrease the client's mental health problems. This is why the lack of knowledge about how behavior really works must be urgently addressed. 

Although this writer believes that better results can be obtained when, after the careful analysis of how behavior is caused and maintained and after environmental changes are made that would lead to better consequences, he is aware that the implementation of this view is not possible given the current state of affairs. Given the pervasive false view that individuals cause their own behavior,  it is not feasible to apply behaviorist knowledge and to focus on matters which occur outside of our skin. The only behaviorist option, which can be successfully implemented, is when the speaker reliably and consistently effects and modifies the environment within the skin of listener. 

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) always positively effects the environment within the skin of the listener. If a speaker doesn’t create such a positive effect in the listener, the speaker’s speech is Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). The NVB speaker always has an adverse effect on the listener, even if this listener accepts this speaker.  Since only the listener has access to what happens within his or her own skin, nobody except the listener can verify or determine what kind of changes occur due to the speaker. It is, however, up to the speaker to check in with the listener and to verify if positive effects have occurred, are occurring and continue to occur. If the listener experiences no positive interoceptive experiences as a consequence of how the speaker speaks, then the speaker is producing NVB becaus he or she is repeatedly causing negative responses in the body of the listener. 

As long as the listener’s private speech reports on the negative physiological condition of his or her body and as long as the negative stimuli originating within the listener’s body co-occur with the expressions of the speaker, the speaker is producing NVB. The negative experiences in the listener always co-occur with the negative NVB expressions of some speaker. When the speaker changes his or her speech from NVB to SVB, the listener experiences this as a physiological change in his or her body. This change, which often is expressed as a relief from pressure or stress, is felt by all communicators. Thus, in SVB the environment within the skin of the listener can be changed, while the environment outside the skin of the listener is deliberately avoided. SVB focuses the speaker as well as the listener’s attention on what happens within their body. As a consequence of this focus, speakers and listeners belong to the same (internal)environment. Whether our behaviors occur within or outside of our skin, the lawfulness of human behavior is the same.

SVB occurs when the body of the speaker and the listener are no longer experienced as separate, that is, as internal and external environments. What is internal and external is determined by the way in which we speak. Separation between internal and external dissolves during SVB, but it is maintained during NVB. In SVB, we co-regulate each other, because we are each other’s environment, but in NVB we dis-regulate each other, because, supposedly, we belong to different worlds.