The past doesn't determine you. The meaning you give it does.

Adler built his entire psychology on this. Two people live through the same event. One uses it as evidence of damage, the other as material for growth. Same experience. Different construction.

This put him at odds with Freud. They used to meet in Vienna, early 1900s, to think through psychology together. But Freud's model ran on cause and effect. Childhood explains adulthood, trauma explains behaviour, the past explains the present. Adler rejected this.

The interpretation is the act. You are not the thing that happened to you. You are what you do with the meaning you attach to it.

That's a harder truth than Freud's. Freud lets you locate the source. Adler hands you the responsibility.

The past is not a prison. It's material. What you build from it is entirely up to you.