Nature vs. Nurture in Monkey Communication. The Effects of Experience on the Development of Emotional and Referential Content in Rhesus Macaque (Macaca mulatta) Vocalizations

We believe that our ability to be congruent in our communication is a skill we carry with us throughout our lives — both in our communication in therapy and in our other inter-personal relationships as well. It gives us great pleasure and is a continuing delight to find ways of being more effective in communicating with ourselves, with our colleagues in writing this book, and, hopefully, in communicating to you some of the excitement and joy we have experienced in the process of communication. For us, communication means experience — the ability to be in touch with what we are feeling, to see clearly what is available at a given point in time, and to hear with precision the sounds of life. These skills, which we are constantly developing in ourselves, were the essential ingredients in the writing of this book. We want to emphasize that our desire in creating this book is to offer people-helpers some of the tools, patterns, ways of developing new choices with families which, up to this point in time, we have used only among ourselves ...»