There were LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) explosions at homes, torture of anticorruption advocates, train accidents, massive traffic jams, violence by municipal police and deepening of deprivation among low-income people resulting from an increase in basic electricity tariffs.

How do we make meaning from those painful experiences? Some of the people, and maybe the majority of bureaucrats and public policy makers, would like to utter that the huge agonizing experiences were consequences (abbreviated to C) of some activating events (abbreviated to A) that had already existed in the society.

Hence, C results from A. This is the “A-C logic”. In this perspective, people say that the torment of the anticorruption campaigner is a consequence of the campaigner’s anticorruption activities that have already created inconvenience and worry among many corrupt officials in the country.

Those home LPG outbursts are considered to be a consequence of a necessity to change the daily use of kerosene to LPG at homes throughout the country in order to save the state budget, although this necessity is not intermingled with the readiness of people to quickly become accustomed with the safe use of LPG at home.

Train accidents were regarded as a consequence of an already poor railway affairs infrastructure.

Municipal police’s violence were deemed to be a consequence of society’s unruliness which then rose the need for augmenting repressive actions by the municipal police. Huge traffic jams are believed to be a consequence of an increasing number of cars on roads.

And deprivation that becomes deeper among the grassroots following the increase in basic electricity tariffs is believed to be an inevitable consequence of high electricity production cost.

In a nutshell, those many agonizing experiences are understood under the A-C logic which emphasizes that some activating events (As) — which have already existed in society — have worked to produce painful experiences (Cs).

Utilizing the A-C logic, bureaucrats and public policy makers gain a safe haven, for the reason that under the A-C logic their roles in creating an agonizing experience in society are disregarded.

A painful experience in society (a C) is merely considered to be a consequence that resulted from an already existing reality in society, which functions as an activating event (an A). The process of an A yielding a C is absolutely not connected with bureaucrats and public policy makers as well.

People don’t blame bureaucrats and public policy makers. If they want to blame, please blame the reality, because reality itself brings about painful experiences.

The A-C logic can be infiltrated covertly into people’s collective unconscious without significant resistance. Whereas in fact, as insisted by Paul Chadwick, Max Birchwood, and Peter Trower (2003), the A-C logic is flawed.

The three cognitive therapists were inspired by Albert Ellis (the founder of the rational emotive behavior therapy), and then insisted that the right logic was the “A-B-C logic” (the “Activating event-Belief-Consequence logic”).

This logic indicates that a painful experience in society (a C) does not result from a reality that has already existed in the society (an A), but resulted from a policy created by bureaucrats and public policy makers who use their “personal belief” (B) to achieve personal meaning from reality (A), and then based on the personal meaning they create that policy.

That cognitive therapists’s clarification is in accordance with the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s thought, that humans could never get reality as noumena, for example. reality as it is.

According to Kant, what human beings can only do is to achieve personal meaning from the reality and take on the reality as “phenomena”, for example, the reality as it appears to humans.

The anticorruption pursuits which are realized by anticorruption activists will seem in front of corrupt officials as personal phenomena, which bring about fear and anxiety for them.

The cognitive therapists will elucidate that the corrupt officials suffer from fear and anxiety, since they personally interpret the anticorruption campaigner’s activities in the perspective of their own belief (B), which can be represented by the utterance “My interest is higher and more than anything”.

In the context of that belief, the anticorruption activists are big dangers and huge threats, so they should be dismissed.

Based on the A-B-C logic, the home-use LPG outbursts cannot be considered as a consequence of the people’s incapability to use gas in a proper manner.

The outbursts are consequences of the realization of the bureaucrats and public policy makers’s belief that their interest is higher and more than anything, accordingly they ignore society’s safety and
wellbeing.

The poor railway affairs infrastructure cannot be judged as the cause of many train accidents in the country.

Those accidents rooted in the bureaucrats and public policy makers’s belief that their interest is higher and more than anything, therefore they do not take the rail users’s wellbeing into account.

The same belief — “My interest is higher and more than anything” – is also at the root of municipal police’s violence as well as the deepening of deprivation among low-income people in this country.

It is very important to highlight the A-B-C logic as a right standpoint prevailing over the A-C logic. That highlighting emerges two major awareness.

The first, bureaucrats and public policy makers should not close their eyes to their inherent responsibility in the context of many painful experiences occurring in society.

This awareness is very important to motivate bureaucrats and public policy makers to unceasingly improve their performance as public servants.

The second, one of the basic mental problems of this nation — despite that the nation gained its independence 65 years ago — is the unconscious belief that individual’s interest is higher and more than anything.

As long as the nation never changes that belief with a new belief that public interest is higher and more than individual interest, people will always suffer from many painful experiences.


The writer, a psychotherapy-consultant psychiatrist in Malang, is chairman of the Psychotherapy Division of the Indonesian Psychiatric Association.

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