May 29, 2014

May 29, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

This writing is under discriminative control of Italian Baroque music. The reader can’t hear this music, but this writer can hear it and this will make him write words, which sound like trumpets and violins. Moreover, an entire choir will sing these words and makes the reader think about texts which are sung.  The victorious sounds of this music sets the stage for events to occur which couldn’t happen in any other way. Many of these beautiful sounds are never listened to in our current environment. They need to be reintroduced or they will be lost if they are no longer made. They are only made if they can be made. What made people make these wonderful sounds? What makes us produce the horrible sounds we produce today? Certainly, different environments led to very different sounds and if we would know how to create these environments, we would again become capable of producing and enjoying beautiful sounds. 

During Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), in which the speaker listens to him or to herself while he or she speaks, an unusual phenomenon happens because it can happen: the human organism is experienced as one unity, which means, one is simultaneously the speaker and the listener.In Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) the speaker isn’t listening to him or herself while he or she speaks. Consequently, turn-taking is absent in NVB, because only the speaker is allowed to be and to remain the speaker, while another person than the speaker is only allowed to be and to remain the listener. 

Another way of explaining the aforementioned is that NVB is always uni-directional, while SVB is always bi-directional. In SVB there is a reciprocal relationship between the speaker and the listener, whereas in NVB the speaker and the listener are not connecting with each other. Although the speaker who produces NVB always produces NVB because he was, is or continues to be reinforced for his or her NVB, the disconnect between the speaker and the listener in NVB is always caused by the speaker and not by the listener. Speakers cause SVB or NVB and listeners reinforce one or the other.

Speakers who don’t listen to themselves while they speak prevent the listener from understanding what they are saying in ways which haven’t really been identified because we are so used to and conditioned by NVB. Once the distinction is made between SVB and NVB we get clear on what we were missing.Speakers who don’t listen to themselves while they speak always produce a tone of voice which signifies negative emotions. 

During the seminars this writer regularly facilitates it becomes clear that the participants are seemingly deaf to the sound of their own well-being. We listen to our stress, anxiety, fear and anger, but not to our peacefulness.Individuals begin to listen to themselves while they speak, because they are stimulated to do so by this author. Once this happens, they become, even if it is only for a few moments, capable of hearing the sound of their well-being. In moments of SVB speakers produce an enjoyable sound and others can hear it too.  

During NVB we don't express our well-being. Some got more love and attention than others and those who did accrued due to this behavioral history more SVB components than others. Those of us who were taught to not only to listen to others, but who were also reinforced for listening to themselves, they received more love and attention than those who were only reinforced for listening to others, but who were prevented from listening to themselves. They grew up in a way which conditioned them to coerce others to listen to them.

However, it must be made clear, that those who presumably received more love and attention, will only be able to produce SVB if they focus their attention on the distinction between SVB and NVB. They too depend on someone who knows this distinction to stimulate them to produce SVB. The mere fact that those who received more love and attention were able to gather more components that make SVB possible than those who didn’t receive as much love and attention, doesn’t make them produce it. SVB is only produced if the environment (the author) stimulates us do so. 

The instruction given by this author, to listen to one self while one speaks, is as necessary for those who already gathered some SVB components, who therefore have an easier time understanding what SVB is, as for those for whom these components need to be build up from scratch.The process occurring in this author’s seminars in which these components are discriminated, understood and verified, creates an acknowledgment among the participants that our behaviors are response products of the environments that we have lived in, in which listening to ourselves while we speak was never really taught by anyone.

 

Just as there are behavioral cusps that determine our individual development, there are behavioral cusps that have the potential to unite the human race. Due to scientific findings new behaviors are shaped and old behaviors are extinguished. SVB is a global cusp with immense power. A speaker is only a conscious speaker if this speaker is also a listener while he or she speaks. Listening before one speaks or after one has spoken is often mistaken for listening while one speaks. When one listens while one speaks one is a conscious communicator, because the production and the observation or, rather, the listening, occur here and now.

The opposite is also true. The listener is only truly a listener if he or she speaks. We don’t listen, because we don’t speak or, rather, we can’t listen, because we are not allowed to speak by those who coerce us into a way of communicating which this author calls Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).The aim of this author is to point out that NVB, in which neither the speaker is really a speaker nor the listener is really a listener, should no longer be considered as communication. NVB is the language of codependence in which the enabler is enabled and in which negativity and dysfunctionality is reinforced.  

NVB is not communication, because it is about domination and being dominated, coercion and being coerced, manipulation and being manipulated, oppression and being oppressed, sales and being sold, abuse and being abused. SVB is communication because the speaker and the listener can be one because of the absence of aversive stimulation.SVB is the language of mental health and NVB is the language of psychopathology. We don't  cause our own actions, but we cause each other’s actions, because we are each other’s environment. In NVB, we are unaccountable to how we influence each other, because we were made to believe that we cause our own actions. 

In SVB we are all accountable because we can and we want to be accountable, but in NVB we are all unaccountable, because we can’t be accountable. There is nothing to hold anyone accountable with, because there is no confrontation or communication going on in NVB.  SVB is scientific communication, but NVB is unscientific communication. Scientific communication allows for objectivity as well as subjectivity, whereas unscientific communication excludes subjectivity in the name of objectivity.  

Another way of saying this is that private speech is tossed out of public speech in NVB, but in SVB our private speech is included in our public speech. Private speech is a function of public speech, but in our NVB public speech is wrongly considered to be a function of our private speech! NVB public speech causes NVB private speech and SVB public speech causes SVB private speech. The only way to solve NVB private speech is by engaging more often in SVB public speech. Nothing can or needs to be done about NVB private speech.

NVB private speech always signifies a lack of SVB public speech. It is also NVB public speech which makes us believe that NVB private speech causes NVB public speech. NVB public speech is caused by the absence of the contingencies which make SVB public speech possible. NVB public speech resembles a state of deprivation from which we want to escape in any way possible. Since contingencies for SVB are not present when contingencies for NVB are present, we attempt to escape from NVB by producing more NVB, both publicly as well as privately. 

The only way in which we can escape from the onslaught of NVB and eventually can learn to avoid it, is by recognizing it for what it is and how it comes to about. Discrimination between SVB and NVB allows us to continue with SVB private speech in the face of NVB public speech. This ability,  however, is only as good as the extent to which we were exposed to and engaged in ongoing SVB public speech. Since nobody, not even this writer, has had such exposure, we struggle to achieve and maintain something that presumably resembles SVB, but which is NVB.

Although he knows how to create the environment that makes SVB possible, this writer is often not in the position to make the necessary changes and doesn’t experience SVB on an ongoing basis either. However, since he regularly organizes seminars, he has a sense of what it is like.The reinforcing effects of what SVB on an ongoing basis can be like has been an inspiration which has determined this writer’s behavior for at least the last thirty  years. The behavioral momentum of the SVB of this author has certainly increased and is likely to continue to increase even more. 

This writer is not, as most people in his seminars do and as he himself did in the past, trying to have SVB! His knowledge of the contingencies of reinforcement is such that he knows that it will happen when it can happen. The increase of his rate of SVB is no longer anything special, but something that is familiar to him. From his work with students and individuals who came to his seminars this writer has derived confidence that SVB can be recognized by anyone who can talk. SVB and NVB are universal categories of verbal behavior which can be easily pointed out to those who are not  familiar with it. This writer believes it is not productive to think of them in terms of good or bad. It is more helpful to think of SVB and NVB as two languages that are learned under different circumstances at different locations.