This essay proposes a critical review of psychoanalysis, emphasizing its origin in Freud and its more recent achievements. It points out the evolution of Freud's work by means of its most important markers, namely, the discovery, importance and scope of the unconscious, and issues concerning intensity, sexuality, pulsion (trieb) and variations, advances and retreats of object relations. Three guiding models of the original psychoanalytic thought and its derivations are identified: the neurotic, the melancholic and the paranoid. The main aspects in evidence in contemporary psychoanalysis are also emphasized, including Brazilian authors. Finally, it is presented a reflection on the vectors that may guide the future of psychoanalysis with respect to its theoretical and clinical aspects, areas of expertise and relations with culture.
psychoanalysis; unconscious; sexuality; pulsion; object relations