August 3, 2014

August 3, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

The more he learns about behaviorology, the natural science of human behavior, the more this writer’s verbal behavior becomes effective. A process of re-conditioning takes place due to which he finally begins to understand and accept the important fact that most of his verbal behavior is much better kept to himself.  The retreat from public, overt speech to private covert speech, happens in normal development, but this writer, due to his troubled upbringing, only experiences this late in his life, after age 55.

Usually, it is after a child has learned how to speak and write that verbal behavior begins to recede to a private level. However, in the case of this writer, it didn’t happen that way. That was why he was described as “an open book” or someone “who has his heart on his sleeve.” The difference between public speech and private speech, the former being detectable by others, the latter being detectible only by one self, was until recently unclear to him.

A child’s loud emotional expressions, such as crying and screaming, are tempered as it learns to speak and write and it becomes private as speech decreases in intensity level. We first speak loudly, then softly and then think silently to ourselves. Also, what we say to ourselves privately can be loud, calm or totally quiet. The public side of the continuum involves the use of our vocal cords, the private side is only about our neural activity.

When one thinks “I don’t feel very well today”, nobody, except the person who is having that thought, has access to that private speech. However, this sub-vocal speech was conditioned under public circumstances. When one first learned to give words to the physiological experience of being sick, one was taught in the language of the verbal community in which one grew up. Yet, what takes place at the most subtle, neuronal level of our private speech can only occur in a language that was already learned.  If the public behavior which accompanies this private speech is to ask for sympathy and if, in the verbal community in which one grew up, this sympathy was given, the thought “I don’t feel very well today” is reinforced. If, on the other hand, one’s request for sympathy is punished by the verbal community, if one’s plea for sympathy falls on deaf ears, one isn't even as likely anymore to have the thought “I don’t feel very well today.” 

Our private speech is a function of our public speech and what we say to ourselves can be traced back to variables that were present in the environment of our verbal community. The misconception that our behavior is caused by an internal agent obfuscates the irrefutable fact that what we say to ourselves is caused by how others have communicated with us. Once he recognized that he had never caused his own behavior, this writer was finally able to stop making his privately detectable experiences public and he was able to overcome his obsession with his verbal confession.