August 25, 2014

August 25, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

In “Maladaptive Functional Relations In Client Verbal Behavior” (1983)Sigrid Glenn states that “Demanding and manipulative behaviors are mands that obtain immediate reinforcement at the expense of  disrupting long-term interpersonal relations.” This author thinks it is best to replace “Demanding and manipulative behavior” with the term Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), because this will help us see how behaviors pertaining to “long-term interpersonal relations” are a different response class, which this author refers to as Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). 

This author agrees with Glenn’s closing statement “The analysis also leads the practitioner to practice to consider how he or she might adjust the contingencies to evoke behavior with more productive long-term outcomes.” By instructing people about SVB, we adjust the contingencies so that behaviors which are limited to a short-term perspective are replaced by behaviors which bring into view a long-term perspective. The long-term perspective includes the short-term perspective, but the short-term perspective, as we all know, excludes the long-term perspective. 

The process of inclusion versus exclusion is mediated by how others speak with us,  but also by how we speak with ourselves, by our private speech. As what we say to ourselves, in our covert private speech (our thinking) is a function of our public speech, we can change our private speech only by means of our public speech. Symptoms of mental illness, such as grandiosity, narcissism, anti-social behaviors or psychosis, are in fact caused, maintained and shaped by our public speech. When not treated as such, no progress can be made in terms of decreasing these behaviors, to the contrary, these behaviors will only be strengthened over time. 

This author has often been surprised by the conviction of schizophrenics in their perception of the reality. Their tenacity told him that they must be right in their own way about something. They are absolutely right about, but they are unable to precisely analyze, what maintains their behavior. They demand reinforcement for it and, for the most part, they succeed. Their aberrant operants, which are expressed as NVB, are inadvertently reinforced even by mental health professionals. If they would only treat a client’s public speech, they would be able to decrease their symptoms, because with SVB clients are reinforced for getting their needs met.