Jumping right in, today we’re starting with Sigmund Freud. German and born in 1856, he gave us what these days we refer to as therapy, a structured and codified method for understanding the mentally ill instead of locking them up. In doing so, he laid the foundations of the field of Psychology.

A good place to begin is his Psychosexual Stages theory, first published in his Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1905. Also known as the Family Drama, this is his model for how personalities form. This theory gave us a lot of familiar words – Ego, Libido, Penis Envy. Some of the meanings have slipped over time, Libido is the survival impulse which supports the instinct for procreation. Not just your level of sexual desire as we use it these days, but still pretty raunchy. Penis Envy was the reason women were incompetent.