October 15, 2016

October 15, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

It is in the middle of the night and I am sitting on the floor with my legs crossed. Kayla our cat sits next to me on her pillow and Bonnie my wife is asleep. I woke up at 2:30am. It was a busy day yesterday, but now it is quiet. I like to think and write about my distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB).

Certain things can only be said about this distinction if one, like me, explores what one is saying to one self. Private speech happens silently; it is only available to us individually. However, this private speech can be made public. In SVB, we make our private speech public. This is not possible in NVB. In NVB we try in vain to keep our private speech out of our public speech. It cannot be done, but we pretend to be doing it.

We make it seem as if how we speak with others has nothing to do with how we speak with ourselves. In SVB, we find out that, although how we speak with ourselves is caused by how others have spoken with us, how we speak with others is related to how we talk with ourselves.

There is nothing circular or mysterious about these links of causation. We can only really talk with ourselves and be in contact with ourselves to the extent that others have really talked with us. Our ability to talk with ourselves is diminished if we can’t talk with others and this will only further increase our isolation, loneliness, confusion and despair.

When in NVB our public and private speech are kept separate, speakers and listeners are also separated. In NVB, we don’t talk with each other, but we talk at each other. All our problems are created and maintained by NVB. Without SVB we cannot address let alone solve our problems.

October 14, 2016

October 14, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Every day I write about the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB). There hasn’t been a day in which I haven’t discovered something new. I promise that you will have similar experiences when you become familiar with this distinction.

My prediction comes true for my students and for my therapy clients. My writing is stimulated by them and is for them, but if you become interested as you realize what I say is true then I write for you too. You only understand me if you take me serious by verifying if it works.

I care about the soundness of my assertions, but I can’t be bothered with those who are unwilling to put what I say to the test. This wasn’t always the case. For a long time I was very upset about not being taken serious. However, there are now enough people who practice my work.

Enough people have taken me serious and I don’t get upset anymore about those who don’t care. My work is validated every day and that is why I can keep reaching out even to those who don’t seem to care about what I say, but who somehow have become my face book friends. 

I befriend anyone who is willing to be in contact with me. Everyone can learn about, implement, verify and be benefitted by the SVB/NVB distinction. I am confident that if you would take the time to read what I have written that it would begin to make more sense to you.

I promise that my words are capable of expanding your short attention span, which is a product of NVB. Once you read my work you will find that your concentration will improve. You will also notice that different things begin to happen when you talk and listen. You will be intrigued.

October 13, 2016

October 13, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

There was a time when technology had not yet advanced far enough to combine recorded sound with motion pictures. In these so-called silent movies dramatic music was played to bring the muted play, which was acted out by means of gestures and mime, alive. Also, title cards were showed to explain the plot and to provide fragments of the dialogue.

The first moves with sound were referred to as talkies, sound films or talking pictures and when our technology made synchronization possible film production moved into the sound era in which music and sound effects began to play a bigger and bigger role. Nowadays, we are drowned in and overwhelmed by sound, and it is much more difficult to notice when communicators engage in Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) or in Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) than in the days of the silent movie.

In NVB the sound of the speaker’s voice is experienced by the listener as an aversive stimulus, but in modern movies that sound is enhanced by sound effects much more than the SVB speaker. The listening behavior of movie goers has been shaped by the sound of coercion and violence.

A similar phenomenon has occurred in our news reporting and in many other TV programs. Newsreaders and actors produce increasingly more hyped up and demanding sounds and yank audience experiences around from one sensation to the next. Everyone demands our attention.

When actors in shows say something funny, we hear canned laughter. There are attention-grabbing commercials which interrupt any kind of ongoing dialogue. Due to NVB, we are constantly distracted by what we hear (and see). We think we are entertained, but we are conditioned to trivialize the vital importance of calmness, continuity and attunement.

October 12, 2016

October 12, 2016 

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

I am proposing an easy and effective way to treat our mental health problems and to stimulate and maintain healthy and happy relationships. We sound the way we do because of people we were with and are with. By focusing on how we sound while we speak we can keep things simple while we explore and learn about more complex phenomena. 

No topic is left unaddressed during Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB), but during Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) one topic always becomes more important than another. We sound different when we engage in SVB or NVB. As we overvalue what we say, we have not paid much attention to how we sound. We often keep getting carried away by what we say.

The sound of our voice is only available to be listened to in the moment that we produce it. We are only able to hear our sound when we listen to ourselves while we speak. Our speaking and listening behavior, that is, production and observation of our speech, occur in the here and now.

During SVB we are sensitive, conscious speakers, who embody their speech, but during NVB we are insensitive, unconscious, disembodied talking heads. Our psychological problems are problems of repetition, but we can only become aware of that by listening to how we sound.

By listening to ourselves while we speak we are aware, we don’t become aware. As we were mostly engaged in and conditioned by NVB, we don’t listen to ourselves while we speak. I stimulate my clients as well as my students to listen to their voice while they speak and each time they do that the solution to their problems becomes available to them.

People recover from mental health problems only to the extent that they listen to themselves. By decreasing NVB and by increasing SVB they discover another way of talking with others and with themselves. Regardless of what diagnoses they have, all my clients are improving.

My students are surprised that my class is so different from any other class. They hesitatingly acknowledge, engage in, explore and appreciate that they are actually enjoying genuine communication. They become more open, more talkative and more at ease. They agree, as the semester progresses, that SVB is increasing and NVB is decreasing.

Similarly to my mental health clients, my student’s learning experience is enhanced by the SVB/NVB distinction which provides an acceptable formulation of their behavior. Although in each class there is a fair amount of skepticism about my analysis, they realize that it works.

Even students who don’t say very much in class convey in their papers how much they enjoy SVB. It is evident from the feedback that people who have no background in radical behaviorism are capable of using my extension to produce a functional analysis of their own behavior. They repeatedly let me know that my teaching has great value for them.

As a teacher and as a therapist I am proud to see, hear and read about my student’s and client’s progress. The changes in behavior that occur are visible, audible and permanent. It is rewarding to be able to predict these changes and to create the situation which makes them possible.

I affect my students and clients with the sound of my voice. They get more attuned to my sound and each time we speak they also become attuned to their own sound.. I induce SVB in them and they induce SVB in me. I have great confidence that things will only get better as we go.

I take my job as a psychology instructor very serious and I call myself a verbal engineer. I am grateful to my clients who trust me to practice the science I have dedicated my life to.  I teach everyone that there is nothing to be gained from the superficiality and coerciveness of NVB.

Understanding of your behavior requires another way of talking. Once you know that SVB is possible and necessary, you become responsible for the environment in which it can and will occur. We are each other’s environment; we either co-regulate or we dysregulate each other.

October 11, 2016

October 11, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

Once you are familiar with the distinction between Sound Verbal Behavior (SVB) and Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) you will notice it is not you who decides to have one or the other, but it is the situation in which you find yourself which will make one possible or the other.

The people you are with and have been with determine whether you will have SVB or NVB. In my situation, as a married man, as a teacher and as a therapist, it is my wife, my students and my clients, who are making it possible to have high rates of SVB and low rates of NVB.

By now I have met thousands of people with whom I have had SVB. As I am getting older, I am having more and more of it. Yet, this was not always the case. Although there certainly was some SVB in the family in which I grew up, it was not in any way different from other families.

My SVB only began to increase after I had discovered the difference between SVB and NVB. Without this distinction I was basically unable to recognize the situation I was in. Without analyzing how other people affect the way we speak, we don’t know how we would like to speak.

We may think we know how we want to speak, but once we acknowledge our high rates of NVB, we realize that our belief that we were causing our own behavior wasn’t true. As our rate of NVB goes down and our rate of SVB goes up, we increase our awareness about our environment.

Someone who never suffered the bad consequences of his or her NVB is unlikely to be motivated to figure out what increases his or her SVB. My development as well as the development of those who are learning from me, was preceded by a lot of rejection and search for meaning. 

Although I didn’t know as a child that I wanted to have SVB, it now seems as if I have always longed for it. NVB has never really worked for me. I don’t think I was born that way, but I did grow up in a family in which a fair amount of attention was given to how one interacts.

My father often said: no matter what it is we can always talk about it. It turned out not to be true, but it set the stage for my exploration. My aim with this writing is to stimulate you to explore interaction. I predict that your exploration, like mine, will result into an explanation.

I cannot explain to you how you were and how you are affected by the people in your life. Only you can know whether all the talking made you happy, got things done or if it made you unhappy as it created chaos.  I simply ask you to categorize the former as SVB and the latter as NVB.

How were you and how are you affected by the talking of others and how did that affect the way in which you talk with yourself? I am not asking you to look inside yourself; I am asking you to consider how you are affected by those people who were and are in your environment.

How your environment has affected you and is affecting you is needed in a functional analysis. Your rates of SVB and NVB are the dependent variables which are caused by the people that you have met and by the people you are currently with. They are the independent variables.

My search for my real self was a haphazard attempt to find the causes of my own behavior. Our rates of SVB and NVB describe events which occur within our skin. Physiological instead of psychological events can be measured: heart rate, galvanic skin response and blood pressure.

There is nothing inner about these events as they are audible in the sound of our voice while we speak. We can all discriminate the great difference between SVB and NVB, but only if we don’t get carried away by our false inner explanations of our talking and listening behavior.