Although it has been shown that psychotherapy is highly effective, there is still a debate on how and why method specific interventions impact on the patient. We propose that psychoanalytic competence is defined by the capability to work with and understand unconscious dynamics by adhering to specific internal attitudes and maintaining certain frames. Due to the elusive nature of the unconscious, establishing an operationalisation of essential competencies is a challenging and intricate task, requiring detailed descriptions of the psychoanalytic process. It is essential to provide an empirically, quantitatively, and qualitatively validatable description. There have been several efforts to operationalize psychoanalytic core competence on a theoretical level as well as empirically. However, these are in many respects too superficial to grasp the full complexity and extent of psychoanalytic concepts of core competence. Although first steps of defining and registering essential core competencies for psychoanalytic practice have been made, we suggest that further developments toward establishing an operationalized empirical research tool are needed.