August 17, 2016

August 17, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

This is my nineteenth response to the paper “Radical Behaviorism in Reconciliation with Phenomenology” by Willard Day (1969). I know a wonderful philosopher from Romania. His name is Cristinel Munteanu. Every couple of months we have a lengthy conversation by skype. He recently send me his latest paper, which is about the linguist Eugenio Coseriu’s views about the “Hermeneutical Principle of Trust”. 

Cristinel and I always engage in SVB as we are both interested in exploring the importance of trust during our interactions. Coseriu (1994), who, like me, is “interested in the science and in the reasons of the speaker” states “the speaker is always right, only that we have to establish from what point of view he is right.” 

Coseriu’s “Principle of Trust” is of great clinical significance. No matter what the client says, they are always right from their point of view. To acknowledge that opens the door to have SVB with anybody, even the most impaired. 

It is a shame most radical behaviorists are stuck with behaviorist jargon. I learned a lot from my friend Cristinel and from my mental health clients and students. Their influence on me makes me a better behaviorist. 

Day was also inspired by the “Principle of Trust” when he stated “the verbal community has taught a variety of practices by which we guess at relevant factors, some more useful than others.” 

Cristinel says “the speaker is right when he uses or creates language, but he may be wrong when he tries to give “scientific” explanations to language facts (when he turns into a “naïve linguist”). However, such a belief proves admitting the same “principio de la confianza.” 

 

We have to accept a person’s behavioral history as what caused him or her to behave the way he or she does. So, “The case is not prejudiced for an interest in what someone has to say about what he considers his own private experience.” My client’s negative private speech has to be viewed in context of NVB public speech form which it originates. 

As NVB can’t accurately describe the reality it dissociates us from it. The dissociation of the client in yesterday’s writing is now put into proper context. The fact that NVB is our normal way of communicating means that we are all in multiple ways dissociating from the natural world, but for various reasons some are dissociating more than others.

When I talk with people who are suffering mental health problems it often strikes me that they are more aware than everyone else that they dissociate. When they are given the chance to speak about their lives they explain without holding back why they feel so disconnected. As this fact is not acknowledged this makes them dissociate even more. 

I agree with Day, who states “Verbal behavior constitutes by far the most convenient avenue of access to anything that might be considered a significant aspect of human knowledge, including one’s own knowledge of himself.” However, it is not as simple as he makes it out to be. “If we want to find out more about what a man is experiencing in a certain situation, one of the simplest things to do is to try to get him to talk.” 

We can only get a person to talk if we talk in such a way that we as speakers don’t aversively affect the listener. The listener will only become an overt SVB speaker if we facilitate SVB to him or her and invite him or her, but he or she will not be willing to speak overtly, that is, he or she will have covert NVB private speech, if we don’t realize that we approach him or her with our NVB overt public speech. 

Day seems to refer to this when he explains “Of course, whether or not we trust the speaker depends upon the nature of the environmental control exercised by him over our own behavior.” In NVB the speaker controls the behavior of the listener with an aversive contingency.