What are the origins of this fun-filled festive custom?
Regardless of his flaws, he was responsible for the creation of an entire school of thought which still influences modern psychology today. Click through the gallery to learn about the life and work of the founding father of psychoanalysis.
Sigmund Freud was born in the Austrian town of Freiberg in 1865. He had seven biological siblings, but it's said that he was his mother's favorite. She called him her "golden-haired Siggie."
His father was a wool merchant and the family was forced to move to Vienna when his business failed. Freud would gain his medical degree there and remain based in Vienna for the rest of his life.
Freud fell in love with Martha Bernays and the couple got engaged after two months. They were married in 1886.
They went on to have a large family with six children. Their daughter Anna also became a famous and influential psychologist.
Many speculate that Freud was searching for something groundbreaking early in his career, and he thought cocaine was going to be it.
In the late 1800s, cocaine was a recent discovery and widely used for medical purposes. In addition to being used as an anesthetic in hospitals, it was available in a variety of over-the-counter products like throat lozenges and sodas.
It was considered a miracle drug, and Freud was one of the early medical professionals to "experiment" with it and extol its virtues. Needless to say, he developed a serious cocaine addiction while writing papers about its incredible effects.
Some say that one of his greatest trademarks, "talk therapy," may have been inspired by the effects of cocaine which caused him to talk freely and endlessly, releasing memories and feelings he thought had been repressed.
One of Freud's early influences was the work of his friend Josef Breuer. Breuer was treating a female patient suffering from "hysteria," which presented itself in the form of convulsions, paralysis, and hallucinations.
Breuer was able to relieve her symptoms by helping her to recall traumatic incidents from her past. He frequently wrote to Freud and shared the details of her case.
Freud began to develop his theory that physical symptoms and mental illness are manifestations of deeply repressed memories and feelings.
This led to the development of his theory that the conscious mind is only the tip of the iceberg. He separated the human mind into three levels of consciousness.
The second level is the subconscious. This contains things like memories and knowledge that we could bring forward into our awareness if we tried.
The third level is the unconscious. It contains things that we aren't aware of, like our base sexual and aggressive instincts, which Freud believes governs our behavior even though they are repressed.
This led to Freud's development of psychoanalysis. The goal was to bring forth the repressed contents of the unconscious mind, causing a kind of catharsis that would heal the patient of their mental illness.
That is the theory of psychoanalysis, but it also involves a specific kind of therapy. Freud would have a patient lie down on the couch and he would sit behind them and take notes as they talked about their childhood experiences.
This classic form of psychoanalysis usually required two to five sessions per week over several years.
Freud was famously fascinated with dreams and saw them as a direct gateway to the unconscious. The defenses of the mind are lowered while a person sleeps and their repressed feelings can manifest in their dreams.
Freud's theories about women reflect his traditional and outdated attitudes. In 1925 he wrote a paper on the subject of the differences between men and women in which he said, "women oppose change, receive passively, and add nothing of their own."
Many of these theories coincide with his work on psychosexual development, which proposes that children fixate on different parts of their bodies at different stages of infancy while developing their sexual proclivities. During the "phallic stage," girls may develop a particular kind of anxiety.
Freud claimed that when girls become aware that they don't have male genitalia, they become resentful of their mothers whom they hold responsible for this "disadvantage," and become closer to their fathers.
Another of his theories was that "hysteria," a female mental illness, was caused by repressed sexual desires in women. While his understanding of woman was greatly lacking, it was progressive to even acknowledge that women have sexual desires.
Freud didn't see much potential in women, but ironically his daughter Anna went on to become a famous psychoanalyst in her own right.
While many of Freud's theories are now discredited, his groundbreaking work was an essential stepping stone for other great minds to reach modern psychology as we know it today.
His lexicon has become part of our everyday language: denial, repression, libido, and the Freudian slip!
Freud was forced to leave Austria during the Nazi invasion, and many of his books were burned along with other "offensive" modern texts.
Now, take a look back at the Impressive photos of World War II.
The controversial side of Sigmund Freud
How he became known as "history's most debunked doctor"
LIFESTYLE Retrospective
Sigmund Freud is perhaps the best-known psychologist in the world. His work was revolutionary and he was one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, but his theories came with a great deal of controversy. During his life he was fighting an uphill battle against archaic attitudes towards psychology. Nowadays, his theories on women and sexual development are widely discredited. He has often been called "history's most debunked doctor."
Regardless of his flaws, he was responsible for the creation of an entire school of thought which still influences modern psychology today. Click through the gallery to learn about the life and work of the founding father of psychoanalysis.