Explaining the Importance of Early Memories in Career Counseling

I love exploring the Early Memory Construct in career counseling.
If we all asked ourselves, hmmmm, "What is my earliest memory?", focus on that memory and analyze it, we would learn a lot about ourselves, how we see ourselves and how we fit into the world.

One of my counseling heroes, Alfred Adler, believed that personalities or visions of how we "fit" into the world are established at a very early age. He also believed that children formed a definite "prototype" of themselves by age five.

This is a valid argument, because brain research indicates that humans normally develop explicit and semantic memory after the second birthday. That would indicate that most individuals would "store" certain significant memories between two and five. Why is your earliest memory significant? It is because that is your first memory of being a person, separate from your parents, separate from your environment, your first experience as an individual being

One would think that the significance of one's earliest memory might be diminished or changed after going through subsequent experiences later in childhood, but it does not. An individual will go through life in a series of attempts to prove or disprove their earliest memory.

An example of this was a 40 year old female client of mine who was desperately desiring to make a career change. Her career in social work was literally killing her. She was a wonderfully warm, caring person, who was selfless--not only in her work life, but with her family, her church and her community. Her early memory was this: One Christmas when she was four, she received an outdoor log cabin playhouse. Family finances were a problem that year because her father had been unemployed, but they were eager to give their four year old daughter the thing she wanted most. Instead of being overjoyed at her parents' generosity, she cried and cried and felt horrible. She felt that did not deserve such happiness at such a difficult time. She felt guilty.

This early memory was carried like baggage for the rest of her life--that she was undeserving and that others always came before self. She even chose a profession that perpetuated this "me last" feeling.

So what is your earliest memory? and what do you think this has to do with your feeling about yourself and your work?