October 10, 2014

October 10, 2014

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Behaviorist

Dear Reader, 

 

It became a habit for this writer to write at least one page in his journal every day. In the past he made many audiotapes to which he still sometimes enjoys to listen to. Although he realizes that writing is not the same as talking, he has come to enjoy it almost as much as speaking. He hasn’t made his writings public and also his audiotapes were never listened to by anyone. This writer has not published a book or a paper and hasn’t made his audiotapes about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) public.

During class students were talking about video-recording the interaction and putting it on YouTube. This writer would be grateful if someone who knows how to operate this technology could help him with that, but given the fact that people have often said such things in the past and never did anything,  he is not that eager put much energy into it. The best results so far have always come from immediate contacts with people and not from any publications or promotional activities. 

While reading the book “Running Out Of Time” (2014) by Stephen Ledoux, it  occurs to this writer that even this knowledgeable man doesn’t recognize the need to distinguish between written and spoken aspects of the verbal episode. It is odd that this writer, who is so against writing, is now writing about speaking, which can’t be replaced by writing. Yet, under the circumstances that he is currently in, it is easier to write for him than to speak about SVB. This wasn’t always the case and it is interesting to look into why this has changed. 

In recent times, this writer – as a speaker – has so often been acknowledged and validated, that his need to speak and to be validated has dramatically decreased. Before, he had an intense urge to speak, but that urge has calmed down. Also, almost on a daily basis, he receives requests to write about his views. The few times that he let people read his writings, he received positive reinforcement. He now has a better understanding of the possibilities of the written word and is open to reaching people with his writing. Yesterday’s classroom discussion was a direct result of that.   

Class Room Memory Assignment

Discuss in groups of 5 any of the following :

-         What does it take for you to remember?

-         When you forgot something…what happened?

-         Why is it difficult to forget or easy to remember?

-         Where was it that you kind lost it (?)..your mind?

-         When did you find yourself back?

-         When did you forgive and remember the good times?

-         When do positive memories become painful memories?

-         Do you have trouble remembering what is important to you?

-         What does this exercise remind you of?

-         What are your first memories?

-         Can you think of memory without asking yourself a question?

-         What distracts you from remembering your purpose?

-         Why do you always only remember certain things and not others?

-         How are meaning and memory related?

-         How does your emotion effect memory?

-         Does your body remember things..give an example.

-         Does one place remind you of another place?

-         Does music bring back memories?

-         What do you recall about those times in which you felt free?

-         What has being in the moment has to do with memory?

-         Does trauma affect memory? Increase it or decrease it?

-         Is memory a real thing or is it something we imagine?

-         Does someone who is bilingual have two memories for each language?

-         When was the last time that you felt happy that you forgot something?

-         Do we only remember what we want to remember?

-         How does knowledge change memory?

-         Is knowledge memory or is memory knowledge?

Another reason why speaking and listening is much more important than writing and reading, is because reading and writing is always done alone, while speaking and listening is done together. Stated differently,  Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) involves the simultaneous behaviors of the verbalizers and the mediators. During SVB our individual behavior doesn’t matter, because what really matters is how the communicators behave together. During Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), however, it is the individual behavior of either the speaker or the listener, which matters. In NVB, the behavior of the verbalizer and the mediator never matter simultaneously.

This writer had not made this distinction, which is of importance for a functional account about our interaction. It is necessary to describe, explain and predict the behavior of individual organisms, but that description is not sufficient to explain how we behave together while we communicate. Whether we are having SVB or NVB signifies two different worlds, one in which we are at peace, the other in which we are perpetually at war. The consequences of our verbal behavior are far-reaching. When we are unable to analyze how our individual behavior separates us from our behavior together, we lose our sanity. Individual behavior only makes sense in terms of how we behave together. During SVB we make sense of ourselves and each other.

In SVB we notice how we affect our environment and how we ourselves are affected by our environment (by others). Whether we are verbalizers or mediators is not relevant, because in SVB there is turn-taking and thus, we switch back and forth between being a verbalizer and a mediator. Another way of stating this is that our endo-environment and ecto-environment are continuously interacting with each other and that this interaction sets the stage for SVB. However, the lack of interaction between an individual’s endo- and ecto-environment, sets the stage for NVB. Thus, in SVB we adhere to the fact that we exist in one natural environment, but in NVB, we claim the falsehood that we exist in separate idiosyncratic worlds.