“We are self-determined by the meaning we give to our experiences; and there is probably something of a mistake always involved when we take particular experiences as the basis for our future life. Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determineourselves by the meanings we give to situations.” — Alfred Adler (1870-1937)

“From the first days of childhood we can see dark gropings after this ‘meaning of life.’ Even a baby is striving to make an estimate of its own powers and its share in the whole life which surrounds it. By the end of the fifth year of life a child has reached a unified and crystallized pattern of behavior, its own style of approach to problems and tasks. It has already fixed its deepest and most lasting conception of what to expect from the world and from itself. From now on, the world is seen through a stable scheme of apperception: experiences are interpreted before they are accepted, (p. 12) and the interpretation always accords with the original meaning given to life. Even if this meaning is very gravelymistaken, even if the approach to our problems and tasks brings us continually intomisfortunes and agonies, it is never easily relinquished. Mistakes in the meaning given to life can be corrected only by reconsidering the situation in which the faulty interpretationwas made, recognizing the error and revising the scheme of apperception. In rare circumstances, perhaps, an individual may be forced by the consequences of a mistaken approach to revise the meaning he has given to life and may succeed in accomplishing the change by himself. He will never do it, however, without some social pressure, or without finding that if he proceeds with the old approach he is at the end of his tether: and for the most part the approach can best be revised with the assistance of someone trained in theunderstanding of these meanings, who can join in discovering the original error and help to suggest a more appropriate meaning.

“Let us take a simple illustration of the different ways in which childhood situations may be interpreted. Unhappy experiences in childhood may be given quite opposite meanings. One man with unhappy experiences behind him will not dwell on them except as they show him something which can be remedied for the future. He will feel, ‘We must work to remove such unfortunate situations and make sure that our children are better placed.’ Another man will feel, ‘Life is unfair. Other people always have the best of it. If the world treated me like that, why should I treat the world any better?’ It is in this way that some parents say of their children, ‘I had to suffer just as much when I was a child, and I came (p. 13) through it. Why shouldn’t they?’ A third man will feel, ‘Everything should be forgiven me because of my unhappy childhood.’ In the actions of all three men their interpretations will be evident; and they will never change their actions unless they change their interpretations. It is here that Individual Psychology breaks through the theory of determinism. No experience is a causeof success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences — the so-called trauma — but we make out of them just what suits our purposes. We are self-determined by the meaning we give to our experiences; and there is probably something of a mistakealways involved when we take particular experiences as the basis for our future life. Meanings are not determined by situations, but we determine ourselves by the meanings we give to situations (p. 14).”

* Alfred Adler (1870-1937), What Life Should Mean to You, 1931, Pp. 12-14. Edited by Alan Porter.