January 6, 2016

January 6, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) is an operant behavior, which means that it will increase due to its consequences. However, there must always be an antecedent stimulus which sets the stage for this response to occur. This stimulus is the sound of someone’s voice. And, you can only engage in SVB if someone else mediates it. Our verbal behavior is a social phenomenon. Although you can and should take time to sit by yourself to explore what it is like to listen to yourself while you speak, SVB only makes sense to the extent that you are reinforced for it by others. 

Your inability to share SVB with others is not due to you, but due to others.  If others don’t or can’t produce the sound which sets the stage for SVB, you will not be able to engage in it. If you talk with me, you will find that I provide the stimulus which will make SVB possible. However, I can only do this to the extent that you reciprocate my SVB. If you don’t reinforce my SVB, I can’t continue with it. We engage in SVB together or in NVB. In the former, we mutually enhance each other, but in the latter, we try to force and dominate each other. 

The SVB/NVB distinction is recognizable by how we sound while we speak. We sound different when we engage in SVB or NVB. Once we are listening to ourselves while we speak, we realize we agree on how we sound, that is, we all agree that in SVB the speaker sounds good, but in NVB the speaker sounds terrible. This unanimous agreement is most unusual. Moreover, it occurs at a nonverbal level, which sets the stage for agreement at a verbal level. Agreement in SVB is determined by the congruence between our verbal and our nonverbal expressions.

January 5, 2016

January 5, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Different people set the stage for a different kind of interaction. You have unknowingly been involved in situations in which you regretted the increase of NVB or enjoyed the increase of SVB. I stimulate you to be knowingly involved in your vocal verbal behavior. I can do that because my voice sounds different from someone who doesn’t listen to him or herself while he or she speaks. I am not saying I am always listening to myself, I can’t, but I have more of a history with listening to myself than you do. I found that SVB can be prolonged by listening to myself. 

Listening to myself while I speak was a major discovery, because, until that moment, I frantically wanted others to listen to me. By calmly listening to myself while I speak I discovered that others prevented me from listening to myself. Others seldom allowed me to listen to myself. It was confusing at first, but I figured out that even those who stimulated me to express myself stopped me from listening to myself. 

I discovered that even those who wanted to listen to me were not listening to themselves, and, therefore, they couldn’t and didn’t stimulate me to listen to myself. I was often reinforced for saying what I felt and thought, for things which others were afraid to express. I have said many things which got me rejected. Although I was deeply troubled by this, it didn’t stop me from expressing myself. My interest went from acting, to poetry, meditation, singing, music, philosophy, psychology and talking and then to radical behaviorism.  Only the sound of someone who is listening to him or herself while he or she speaks stimulates you to discriminate the difference between SVB and NVB.

January 4, 2016

January 4, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Regardless of the high amounts of care, love and attention that you have received, you will still produce higher levels of Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) than Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). The reason for this is that the SVB/NVB distinction was not yet made. I have discovered it.  Many people have tried to talk about this distinction, but they have failed. I was able to succeed as my way of talking made continuation of SVB possible. Others have failed because their NVB prevented the continuation of SVB. For a long time NVB also prevented continuation of my SVB, but this is no longer the case. I predict that the more you come to know about the SVB/NVB distinction, the more you will see an increase of your involvement in SVB and a decrease of your involvement in NVB. This has happened to me ever since I have made this discovery.  

Your involvement in your native language is not caused by you. The idea that you decide to have own behavior is totally wrong. The members of your verbal community reinforced you to speak your native language. Likewise, SVB or NVB is also not caused by you. There is, however, a great difference between being knowingly or unknowingly involved in SVB or NVB. Being unknowingly involved in SVB or NVB has led to and will continue to lead to the increase of NVB and the decrease of SVB. As long as the SVB/NVB distinction isn’t clear this devastating process will continue. The SVB/NVB distinction cannot become clear as long as you continue to pretend that you cause your own behavior.  NVB is the language of make-belief and SVB will sober you up. SVB or NVB is made possible, that is, caused by, circumstances, that is, by different people.  

January 3, 2016

January 3, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

I am not asking you to believe me. I want you to explore with me whether what I say is true. After initially being reinforced by others, your verbal behavior could only become self-reinforcing to the extent that you were exposed to instances of Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB). We have all been exposed to such positive circumstances, although some of us have definitely had more exposure to SVB than others. 

To the extent that you have been exposed to SVB, you already have some familiarity with it. The thing to understand here is that nobody knew that it was SVB and nobody had ever defined or described it as such. SVB, of course, relates to the safety, stability, encouragement, sensitivity, love, care, support and attachment provided by your parents. If these behaviors occurred at a high rate, you were conditioned by that, but if they happened at a low rate you were conditioned by that. Since your parents didn’t call it SVB, it was never properly defined or validated. 

I define and validate SVB for you with these written words and now you must verify if my definition makes any sense.  Moreover, you must also recognize that Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB), the interaction in which the speaker coerces, dominates and punishes the listener, is the total opposite of SVB. You have plenty of familiarity with NVB already and I strongly believe that you are more familiar with NVB than with SVB. 

Due to NVB public speech, private speech, what you say and think to yourself covertly, is having a negative effect on you.  It couldn’t be any other way: your involvement in and your exposure to SVB or NVB public speech resulted into SVB or NVB private speech. In the same way that your native language was conditioned by your verbal community, you have learned to produce high rates of NVB and low rates of SVB.. Some of us have more SVB than others, but most of us produce more NVB than SVB.

January 2, 2016

January 2, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In today’s writing I want to describe the relationship between you and me: I am the teacher and you are the student. I know something you don’t know and I can teach you about it if you accept this as a fact. I am not interested in convincing you. My promise to you is that you will learn about Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) if you allow me to teach you. 

You don’t have to do much to learn from me. Let me do the teaching and take note of how it affects you. There is nothing esoteric about the teacher-student relationship. In any discipline there are those who know more than others. You can learn from them by accepting and by acknowledging this difference. I was once without this knowledge. 

In my search for it I could not find the person who knew about it. Already in my early years it was painfully clear to me that nobody knew about what I was looking for. I kept being rejected because my need for this knowledge wasn’t met. At some point it felt I had discovered something, but since there was nobody capable of confirming my finding, I had to find ways to confirm myself. This is, I now know, the process of automatic reinforcement which is the essence of SVB. 

Verbal behavior is mediated by others. We become literate due to the reinforcement provided by members of our verbal community. Those who didn’t speak, read or write Dutch couldn’t reinforce it. At the early stages of development you were pre-verbal, but as you grew up, you were conditioned by the verbal behavior of the community in which you happened to grow up. Ideally speaking, your verbal behavior became self-reinforcing after it receded to a covert level.  However, that would have only been the case if you had been conditioned by SVB.