The paper explores ‘listening’ as the key technique of psychoanalysis. It considers different concepts of listening and tries to shed some light on the relations between ‘listening’ and ‘understanding’. The receptive quality of listening without ulterior motives and the development of trust regarding the capability of initiating and maintaining a psychoanalytic process guided by the unconscious play a crucial role in the formation of an analyst. The necessity for psychoanalysts to work on keeping an open mind and several methods on how this can be attempted are discussed.