June 8, 2014

June 8, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Per Holth

I have read with great interest your excellent paper “The Persistence of Category Mistakes in Psychology” (2001).  It is now 2014 and I don’t think we have made much progress in addressing them, let alone preventing them. This writing has three goals: 1) to respond to your paper; 2) to inform you about my work which deals with the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and; 3) to explain why this distinction is necessary to prevent category mistakes. I write about these goals not in the order mentioned here. It is important to go back and forth, because that will make things more clear.  

Let me start out by saying that my response to your paper is a function of my work on spoken communication. I bring in many years of experimenting with groups and individuals. Participants in my seminars and sessions come from all walks of life. I have worked with doctors, business owners, government employees, police officers, mentally ill people, teams, soldiers, therapists, students, children, nurses, parents, teachers, journalists, dancers, writers, sales people, musicians, seniors with Alzheimer’s or dementia, children, old people, autistic people, people with traumatic brain injury, criminals and drug addicts. They were all intrigued with my work, which is about whether we communicate or not. 

The fact that problems are addressed and solved by my work is a byproduct, a side effect and not a goal in and of itself. I have given hundreds of seminars on what I used to call “Open Communication”, “The Language That Creates Space”, “Sounds Good Method”, “Listen While You Speak” and (since I have discovered that what I do is  Behaviorism), "Sound Verbal Behavior” (SVB) and “Noxious Verbal Behavior” (NVB)." I want you to be introduced to my extension of Skinner’s work on Verbal Behavior and I am aware that I am only writing about speaking. If you and I would speak about this writing, we would be able to address and understand things which can’t be addressed or understood by reading this writing. 

This writing aims to approach speaking and illustrate what happens when a spoken communication can take place in which category mistakes will not be made. I will sometimes shift from first person to third-person, because that is a better way to inform you about why I think the SVB/NVB distinction is needed to trace and solve category mistakes. This is not an academic paper. I write this to emphasize the fact that writing can't bridge the gap between writing and speaking. 

If this writing is effective, it will convince the reader to talk with this writer. In this talk, the reader will not only listen to this writer, he will also speak with him. There will be turn-taking while talking with this writer. Moreover, as a speaker, the reader will be listening to himself and the writer will be listening to himself as well. While reading, the reader has been basically stuck in the role of listener. He may interact with the text, but at best his interaction consists of responses which are similar to the responses of the writer. The reader wants to read what the writer has written, because he likes to be confirmed in his beliefs. If a writer doesn’t confirm the beliefs of a reader, the reader usually stops reading. 

In a real conversation, in what this author calls SVB, the listener can and does become the speaker and the speaker can and does become the listener. If the listener doesn’t want to hear what the speaker has to say, he will simply stop listening. If what is said is of no interest to the listener, he will be turned off. Likewise, if this writing is of no interest to the reader, the reader will stop reading. In reading, when the reader stops reading, the writer is unable to ask the reader why he no longer wants to read, but while talking, the speaker, if he is aware enough to notice that the listener isn’t listening, may ask or bring attention to why the listener is no longer interested in what the speaker is saying. There is, of course, generally more fine-tuning going on between speakers and listeners than between writers and readers. That being said, or rather, that being written with these words, this writer points out to the reader that the reader's and the writer's repertoires are, of course, always extensions of their speaking and listening behaviors.

 

Having written about the persistence of category mistakes is not the same as having talked about the persistence of category mistakes. Attempts have been made to talk about category mistakes, but these have failed and have led us to write about them. If attempts to talk about category mistakes would have succeeded, there would have been no need to write about them. That we write about category mistakes tells us that we don’t know how to talk about them. As we will continue to explore, we will find out that much, if not most, of what we write about is a function of our inability to accurately talk about it.  

Having written and, therefore, not said that, the persistence of category mistakes in psychology is due to how we talk and not due to how we write. We write how we talk and if we believe we talk how we write, we get carried away by imagination. This language phenomenon that gets us carried away has nothing to do with our spoken communication. Due to the persistence of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), we are bound to keep making the same category mistakes.  We fail to recognize that the so-called discussion in scientific papers doesn't involve talking, but is in fact only the  writing that was done by some specialized academic scholars. 

Most likely, there never even was any real conversation. Most likely, face-to-face interaction was avoided by writing. The dialogue which is avoided by our writings cannot reveal to us what actually happens during conversation. It is considered to be a philosophical and not an empirical matter to think about what happens if the controlling circumstances of behavior are talked about instead of written about. Why do we even make this distinction? Is it to give ourselves approval to explore what we don’t dare to do during our spoken communication? Do we allow written possibilities which we do not and cannot accept in spoken communication? Certainly, it is easier for us to admit that we have real needs, in our writing, in our journal, than in our spoken communication.

The controlling circumstances which result in writing are of course different from those that result in talking. Likewise, the controlling circumstances resulting in SVB are different from those that result in NVB. Even if we would actually have that so-called discussion, which we normally only imagine and keep writing about, we are unable to identify or avoid our category mistakes, because in NVB we are, without knowing it, assuming that we are communicating. 

When U.T. Place felt "his end was near", he was rightfully doubtful about whether a new generation would “carry the torch forward”. His insistence on the importance of category mistakes demands a focus on the verbal behavior of those who make them. Moreover, it requires a new way of communicating, and, a new environment in which this new way of communicating could be generated and maintained. For way too long the supposedly “effective basic science of behavior” has been based on writing instead of on speaking. 

Psychology textbooks obfuscate the profound lack of and disdain for spoken communication within and between disciplines. Much if not most of what has been written about psychology is an escape from the troublesome reality, which is still waiting to be acknowledged. Psychologists who talk about progress or what has been found scientifically can’t even see eye to eye and can’t agree on anything. If we read their discussions in their peer-reviewed journals, we find that their writing about talking is again and again erroneously considered to be the same as talking. Talking about category mistakes… 

Now this writer wants to write about what is described as “one of the most popular quotes in all of psychology”. One can’t help but wonder what would be so poignant about this saying that it is so popular? Ebbinghaus reportedly said “psychology has a long past, but a short history.” He studied forgetting by trying to remember nonsense syllables. He didn’t want to use existing words, because he would then be inclined to use his knowledge to activate memory. When Ebbinghaus speaks of the history of psychology, he refers to what he knows about forgetting nonsense syllables. Such is the fate of those who keep making category mistakes. The long past of psychology has a short history, because of its preoccupation with nonsense syllables, that is with NVB. These nonsense syllables are the perfect metaphor for the unrecognized fact that we have yet to become truly verbal. 

It is often said that history is made; that history needs to be rewritten; that those who don’t know their history are bound to repeat it; and, that the rest is just history. In each of these sayings history is function of a different set of circumstances. History is used dependent on what the verbal community considers to be the appropriate expression for the occasion. The  game of words involved in “the long past” and “short history of psychology” says nothing about our reality, to the contrary, it only seems as if something meaningful was said, but nobody knows what it was.  This comment, which refers to the recent scientific developments in psychology, signifies how little we actually still talk with each other about what we know. Certainly we would know much more if we would talk more. However, this would only occur if circumstances stimulate us to do so. Surely, psychology doesn’t make us talk more. The talking is done for us by so-called experts. Cognitivists and behaviorists have continued and maintained NVB.

From the point of view of someone who knows the distinction between NVB and SVB, it can be stated that most people don't have much history with SVB. This may sound unbelievable at first, but it isn’t when one is familiar with this distinction. Except for the seminars which this author regularly conducts, there has not yet been any situation in which SVB could reliably occur. All the participants in the seminars have repeatedly expressed their surprise about the absence of “conceptual confusion” while they engage in SVB. No matter what race, age, status, gender, education, religion or cultural background, everybody knew exactly what SVB is. 

 

The continuation of category mistakes is a by-product of NVB. In SVB, however, it becomes very evident that although we behave verbally in NVB, it is not to be treated as communication any longer. We may want to call it domination, coercion, exploitation, dissociation, alienation, distraction, but not communication. We need a special term for real communication: SVB. Therefore, category mistakes are communication failures. To mistake NVB for SVB signifies ignorance about this distinction. The ubiquity of category mistakes continues because even behaviorists have not yet made this distinction.  SVB and NVB are universally occurring response classes, which can be explained as operant and respondent behaviors. 

 

Writings couldn’t “sharpen up the notion of a category”. Writings are too blunt and static. Speaking is needed to make us sharp. Only in our speaking can our verbal behavior become more precise, fluid and alive. The speech which listeners find easy to listen to and understand is called SVB. The pervasiveness of category mistakes is also a much-hated communication issue, which psychology has utterly failed to properly address and solve. We are so frustrated with our many communication failures, which can all be explained as category mistakes, that we don’t even want to talk about them anymore. Our biggest category mistake concerns who we are. The discussion of our identity has remained our biggest unresolved communication issue. The false notion we have an identity implies there is someone who has it.

The ancient conundrum of, on the one hand, our behavior, and, on the other hand, our mental events, persists not because of what we say, but because of how we say it. Because of our infatuation with what we say, we ignore the difference between our descriptions and what is described. Even if our descriptions are accurate, this difference still exists. Analogous to what Smedslund (1991) has described as “research methodology at the expense of conceptual analysis” is our obsession with the verbal, which goes on at the expense our ability to acknowledge the consequences of the nonverbal. We have absolutely no clue how much of our spoken communication is disturbed and undermined by nonverbal influences. 

How we were being talked at has had peculiar long-term consequences for our nervous system. Since the proportion of being talked at versus being talked with is, according to those who in the seminars have given it some consideration, approximately 95:5, it is not surprising that we have accepted as normal a negative way of communicating. NVB is the norm. In most of our spoken communication speakers negatively affect the nervous system of the listener. In NVB we dis-regulate each other, but in SVB communicators co-regulate each other.

Only in SVB are we really talking with each other, but in NVB we are talking at each other. In NVB there is uni-directional communication, but in SVB there is bi-directional communication. In SVB we reciprocate each other, while in NVB we disconnect both from ourselves and from each other. During NVB there is always respondent behavior, fight-flight-freeze responses, but SBV signifies the complete absence of fight-flight-freeze responses. During NVB we involuntarily mobilize or immobilize. There is survival value to such respondent behaviors, but these behaviors make it impossible to communicate. In NVB we seek to protect ourselves by moving away from the threat that is presented by negative stimuli coming from the speaker, but in SVB there aren’t any negative stimuli to protect ourselves from. 

Only in situations in which we are threatened do we assert and defend our identity. In situations of imminent threat, such as murder or abuse, we dissociate from our identity. In SVB, however, we transcend, renew and enhance ourselves, due to our safe and reinforcing interactions with others. The issue of identity signifies the process by which we disconnect from each other during our communication. The category mistake involved in who we believe ourselves to be is maintained by NVB, which goes on everywhere. In SVB we are perfectly okay without an identity. Only in SVB can be we ourselves and accurately communicate who we really are. 

   

In SVB the listener and the speaker are united and perceived as one within each  communicator. Only SVB addresses the behavior of the whole organism. Because in SVB the speaker listens while he speaks, because the listener is not confined to or constrained by only being a listener and because the listener can be truly a listener and the speaker can be truly a speaker, in SVB people listen to each other in the same way as they listen to themselves. In NVB we listen to ourselves differently then we listen to each other, but once we listen to each other in the same way that we listen to ourselves, we achieve a new way of communicating, which does justice to who we are as individuals. In NVB the focus is always on the other. Consequently, communicators, even when they listen to themselves, they listen to themselves as if they are listening to someone else in an attempt to hear how others are hearing them. In NVB, due to our stressful attempts to keep paying attention to others, we inadvertently disconnect from ourselves.  

Only repeated observations of SVB and NVB can make us aware of category mistakes, due to which we accept NVB by default. Since most communication is NVB and since we don’t explore the contrast with SVB, we gloss over mistakes even if they keep causing us immense problems. Only in SVB can we understand what happens. In SVB we recognize that moments of SVB were never enough. When SVB is achieved accidentally and momentarily, it is only causing us more trouble. SVB must be achieved predictably, reliably, repeatedly, skillfully, deliberately and consciously. SVB makes no sense as long as it is achieved as a single response, once in a blue moon. SVB is a class of responses which operates differently on the environment than NVB.  SVB and NVB are different units of verbal behavior which are universally recognized, once they are pointed out by an expert like me.   

 

Due to our unevenly developed listening and speaking behavior, we are incapable of properly joining these two behaviors without the help of others. As long as we are individually unable to activate the speaker and the listener, one is going to dominate the other. Because our listening behavior is less developed than our speaking behavior, in most of us our speaking is overpowering our listening. This is equally true for public overt speech and for private covert speech. In SVB, however, listening while speaking signifies the unification of our speaking and listening behavior even if these developed at different rates and strengths. In SVB listening is strengthened and increased so that it remains in tune with speaking. In NVB, on the other hand, the gap between our listening and speaking becomes bigger over time. What this means is that the gap widens between public and private speech. 

Although NVB usually involves a lack of listening, it may also involve a lack of speaking. We have to speak in order to hear ourselves. Obviously, in writing the reader is the listener and the writer is the speaker. However, in writing the reader can only read about the listener, but he can’t be the listener. Likewise, the writer can only write about the speaker, but he can’t be the speaker. Much of what was written and read was based on the mistake that the reader was part of a dialogue and that the writer was saying something. We may say that the words that are written are the same as the words that are spoken, but these "written words are different from spoken words, because written words are visual stimuli and make no sound, while spoken words are auditory stimuli that have no shape". Writing is a function of speaking and our speaking preceded this writing. This writing takes the reader from writing back to speaking, so that we can address our category mistakes. 

Many category mistakes have continued because of our lack of speaking. The emphasis on reading and studying led to a decrease in our listening behavior. The more we read, the less we listen. The more we speak, the more likely we will able to listen, but we only listen while we speak in SVB. The more we have NVB, the more our writing is our escape from communication. It could be said that such writing is NVB writing, because such writing maintains our category mistakes.

 

SVB refers to a unitary response class. The “hunting for classes of events that do not correspond meaningfully to any particular behavior class” is a typical feature of NVB. Once we talk and experience the easily missed difference between SVB and NVB, we know that we are dealing with two distinct “meaningful behavioral units.”  SVB and NVB are “events which covary in orderly fashion.” Unlike behaviorism and mentalism, SVB and NVB don’t overlap. When one is present the other is absent. This means is that each time we go back and forth between SVB and NVB, the environment completely changes.  It is NVB and not the “special dialect of behavior analysts that has been responsible for a lack of communication.”  

The fixation on the verbal, which occurs in NVB, is such that communicators pretend as if the nonverbal no longer exists. What we say is always a function of how we say it. Our nonverbal behavior, that is, how we sound, represents our phylogenetic history, but our verbal behavior, that is, what we say, represents our ontogenetic history as well as our cultural conditioning. Alignment between saying and doing requires alignment between our verbal and our nonverbal behavior. In NVB such alignment isn’t possible. In NVB we are unable to say what we want to say because of how we are supposed to speak. In NVB we make ourselves and each other talk in a predetermined way. NVB doesn’t allow us to be alive, but in SVB the speakers and listeners are spontaneous and full of energy.

“What counts as an explanation?” Why did none of the discussions between the behaviorists and the mentalists, or why, for that matter, did peace-talks, never end with “any significant agreement or consensus between representatives of the two traditions?” Aren't the “two different kinds of explanations”, cognitivism and behaviorism, that presumably set us apart, better captured by SVB and NVB??

,

 

The accusation that “cognitivists have treated the two kinds of explanations as belonging to the same category” is actually not so far-fetched when one considers that their insistence on cognitive events refers to private speech, which is a function of public speech. “Adding in cognitive events and processes” refers to including private speech again in public speech. In NVB private speech is excluded from public speech, but in SVB private speech is included in public speech. The fact that behaviorists haven’t yet put SVB and NVB on the map is astounding. 

Category mistakes can be construed as our inability to communicate effectively the categories we have come up with. Whether we are talking about cognitivist accounts versus functional accounts or structural versus functional accounts, what matters is we consider these as products of vocal verbal behavior. That this hasn’t happened is because we are busy arguing about what we say and not about how we say it. 

In closing, this author agrees with Catania (1973), who stated that “structural and functional concerns compliment rather than conflict with each other”. Also, this author agrees with Holth, who suggests that “an effort to complete the picture [of combining them] is likely to continue” because “none of them are usually even nearly successful enough to appear completely compelling and deterministic.” However, the “200% explanation of behavior” which Holth believes should make “the [category] mistake more obvious” will only be produced when we learn how to talk without threatening each other. Once we achieve and maintain SVB and have “repeated occurrences of certain discrete [SVB/NVB] events” we will be able to produce the writing which will accurately “identify the implied controlling relations.” Since “the use of behavior-analytic words is no guarantee against category mistakes” we need another level of analysis. The same way of talking: “Ignoring the question” whether “imagining is a cognitive or a non-cognitive activity?”, is not going to help us to acquire new terminology that extends the “relevant psychological phenomena.” This new way of communicating, or SVB, is above all a scientific way of communicating, which reveals new approaches to problems, which were not and could not be solved because of category mistakes.