June 22, 2014

June 22, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

It is very satisfying to write every day about the developments that are happening due to Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). In the past, this author has made many audio-recordings of himself on which he explored listening to himself while he speaks, but now he writes about his thoughts and feelings in this journal, which is an ongoing accumulation of the discoveries that are made possible by SVB. The fact that this writing is pleasing this writer is why he keeps doing it. Because these words make sense, this writer is reinforcing himself. However, these words make sense to the reader too and their reinforcing effect is possible because the reader may read and enjoy this writing too. If there was no reader to enjoy this writing, this writing would not be reinforcing this writer. He reads his is own writing, as readers read his writing and they read his writing, in the same way as he reads it. 

When this writer was still recording audio tapes of himself to explore SVB, he didn’t know anything about behaviorism. It was important to him that he made these recordings, because by recording himself, he was working with evidence, which could be listened to again, in the same way that this writing can be read again and again. Although he often went on tangents and allowed himself to explore his own Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), he collected evidence of that too. 

Now that he is writing about SVB and became more knowledgeable about behaviorism, he is producing less and less NVB than when he was speaking about it. There is less and less NVB to be explored, while SVB is abundantly available in his life. In this writing this writer is telling himself and the reader that this is really possible. When he first discovered SVB, he began to speak out loud with himself, because at in the beginning he couldn't even believe it. Because he did that, he convinced himself that it was true, that SVB really exists and that it is possible. Now that he writes about it, he is no longer trying to make himself believe it.  

This writer writes that SVB is possible, not convince himself or the reader, but because it is such a delight to write about it. It used to be such a delight to speak about it and when he made those audio-recordings, this writer would spend hours, sometimes days recording himself. Because through the years he has created so much SVB with so many people, he no longer feels like making audio-recordings. Although he sometimes still listens to them and still enjoys them, he now writes every day and only has time to read what he is writing while he is writing it. While he finishes this sentence, it seems as if these words are catching up with him. 

When the reader, the listener, who ideally reads out loud, reads and hears these words, he or she should get in touch with him or herself. However, if that doesn’t happen, this writing, this speaking is useless, but if it does, and this writer, this speaker, thinks it will, then the reader, the listener, realizes that SVB is possible, because the reader, the listener is another person than he or she thought he or she was.  In SVB the reader, listener becomes the writer, speaker. 


In NVB, the reader, listener was thinking that he or she couldn’t become the writer, the speaker. That was true. In NVB, the writer, the speaker was also thinking he or she couldn’t become the reader, the listener and this was true too; he or she couldn’t. In NVB we were confined to roles, which didn’t allow us to communicate: we can’t speak if we don’t listen and we don’t listen if we don’t speak; we can’t read if we don’t write and we can‘t write if we don’t read; we can’t write if we don’t speak and we can’t read if we don’t listen. In NVB, we can only verbally misbehave.

SVB reveals the possibilities which are necessary to have real communication. If these possibilities remain out of sight, out of hearing range, nothing stimulate us to communicate. We are not stimulated to communicate and that is why we don’t communicate. People may want to communicate, but they don’t know how to do it. Many people have told us how to communicate and we communicate in the way in which we were told, but what we were told was incorrect. We were stimulated to have NVB not SVB. These words stimulate SVB, the correct way of communicating.