June 4, 2016

June 4, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

After I read some of my writing to a colleague, he made a remark which affected me. I had explained some of the clinical aspects of the Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) /Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) distinction to him and I had described to him the relationship between NVB public speech and negative self-talk. 

If our verbal community speaks French, we will learn to speak French and our private speech will also be in French (and not in Russian). Likewise, a person’s private speech is mainly SVB or NVB due to the kind of speech they are exposed to. We behave these two universal response classes only to the extent that we have been exposed to them. 

NVB is the kind of speech in which there is and remains a separation between the speaker and the listener. This separation gets wider and more problematic over time. However, during SVB, there is no separation at all, but there is oneness between the speaker and the listener. Also, in SVB each speaker is his or her own listener. 

During NVB, we tend to consider our private speech, what we think ourselves, as something which is separate from our public speech. During SVB, however, oneness is felt by the speaker and by the listener who is not the speaker as well as by the speaker and by the listener who is the speaker. 

My colleague commented that in behaviorism there is no difference between the behavior which occurs inside or outside the skin. His words confirmed what I have been saying for years and made me realize it is only due to our way of talking that there appears to be a difference between public and private speech. 

The difference we make between private and public speech is maintained by NVB and is dissolved by SVB. Actually, nothing is really dissolved as the difference between  private and public speech never existed in the first place; dissolvement is imaginary. 

My colleague pointed out that the distinction between SVB and NVB appears to be the same as behaviorism’s distinction between behavior that is caused by variables in the environment (inside as well as outside our skin) and mentalism, which assumes an inner self to be causing our behavior. The negative self-talk associated with mental health problems is the natural outcome of our exposure to NVB public speech.