December 24, 2015

December 24, 2015

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Students,

This is my eight response to “The Personal Life of the Behavioral Analyst” by D. Bostow (2011). Life of the behavioral analyst must change. It must become more personal. This shift from the impersonal to the personal involves a change in the way we speak. We must recognize and withdraw from Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) and celebrate and stabilize Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). Even those few behaviorists who know what I am talking about cannot achieve it, as they don’t have the necessary skill to do it. I can teach people this skill. 

Behaviorists have taken many classes, but not my class which teaches the SVB/NVB distinction. Since most behaviorists are in the dark about SVB, they can’t address the elephant in the room (NVB) and therefore they keep writing more papers, like Bostow, about how we should try to improve the world. The world cannot and will not be improved as long as SVB is not increased. 

There is of course nothing wrong in getting a vegetable garden and decreasing our carbon footprint, but a change in our repertoire of our verbal behavior is what is needed. To prepare, share and eat healthy foods is great, but my question is: why do we accept unhealthy, poisonous ‘communication’? In NVB people mow each other down and shut each other up with their so-called arguments and are they are only learning bad things from each other. Sadly, such aversive ‘interaction’ goes on everywhere. Once we have SVB, we will find that NVB is NOT communication, in the same way that processed food isn’t really food. NVB goes on in the name of communication, but it is a form of abuse. Once we know this, we want to prevent NVB like want to prevent obesity or illness. 

“Because there are direct relations between each link in the behavioral chains involved in cooking and the reinforcing products, a source of daily satisfaction of tangible accomplishment automatically happens.” Similarly, involvement in SVB creates its own behavioral chains that will then sustain our mental health. Those who have not yet been diagnosed with a mental illness may think that they are healthy, but once they attain SVB they realize how unhealthy, stressful and negative really NVB is.

The reader needs to be reminded that our low rates of SVB are NOT anyone’s “personal failing”, but, as Skinner said (1971), “the absence of a necessary history”. Only someone with a “fully developed behavioral repertoire” can teach SVB and stimulate others to engage in it. My classes are proof that I can teach the components and the linkages between the elements of SVB for all to enjoy.