June 3, 2016

June 3, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In addition to being a psychology instructor, I also work as a therapist with clients who have mental health problems. It is clear that my main job is to provide instructional verbal stimuli. I am teaching my clients new behavior, a new way of responding. They tell me their story, in which case I respond to and validate their response to what has happened. Another task is to point out consequences of their actions and to let them respond to my restating of what they have told me. 

We explore together the function of their behavior and we talk about the stimulus, response and consequence, the three-term contingency. ‘Symptoms’ are consequences of behaviors. Depression is a consequence of how they talk with themselves. Negative self-talk, is maintained by the environment in which there are few reinforcing and mainly punishing stimuli. Such environments need to be avoided for depression to be decreased. 

Other environments, such as the one that I create, provide positive reinforcement, which restructures the client’s private speech. I waste no time in on trying to reduce a client’s negative self-talk as I know it to be part of negative public speech. In other words, Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) public speech, that is, NVB which occurs outside of the skin and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) private speech, that is NVB which occurs inside of the skin, always happen together. 

Thus, ‘symptoms’, such as mania (Bipolar Disorder), inability to focus (ADHD) or psychosis (Schizophrenia), are explained and treated as private verbal behaviors, which originate in and are traced back to our public speech which reinforces them. However, negative public speech doesn’t cause a client's negative private speech, but is part of it. Also, NVB covert speech doesn’t cause NVB overt speech as the two are always a function of the same aversive, hostile, threatening environment.  The therapeutic situation that is created by my SVB reliably decreases the client’s symptoms and increases and validates his or her already successful behaviors.