March 15, 2014

March 15, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

Because of my behavioral history, I have become capable of understanding why most human interaction doesn’t work and can’t work. Yesterday, I was talking with someone, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He lives in a transitional group home, where presumably he learns skills how to become independent. I explained him about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), he understood it completely. We laughed at the irony that most people don’t realize their own habits prevent them. Although he understood it, he recognized there was a difference between understanding it and producing it. Although he had enough behavioral history to recognize SVB, he doubted if he had enough to continue it. I asked him to listen to his voice while he speaks and then say something about this doubt. He then said with an accepting calm smile that his voices weren’t all that bad after all and that he had somehow always tried to listen to them. While saying this, he knew and acknowledged that he was producing SVB. 

Since we have accepted as normal a way of communicating in which our public speech excludes and dissociates us from our private speech, most treatment of people who are mentally ill is rooted in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). The inevitable negative consequences of such a treatment, iatrogenic effects, are caused by well-meaning mental health professionals who are incapable of facilitating SVB. Thus, when people with mental health problems express the wish for SVB, this is not supported, it is seen as part of pathology.  However, the same is true for people who are not diagnosed. Their wish for SVB is rejected too, because nobody really knows how to produce SVB, let alone that it is possible. It is truly amazing that we still doubt the fact that real human interaction exists and must be had. The idea that we cannot have it is in itself destructive and violent. As long as we don’t see each other as our environment, we can’t have SVB. We are on this earth for the length of a life time and during this time we will only be able to have SVB to the extent that we can depend on each other.