The study describes the learning process in psychiatry of medical students through their clerkship and internship, It focused upon the development of students' attitudes to psychiatry, subjective psychiatric competence and self-confidence. The relationships between the participants' background, aspects of the learning environment, their attitudes to psychiatry, psychiatric competence and psychiatric self-confidence were explored in order to develop an empirical model of the learning process. The participants were medical students at the University of Tromsoe, Norway. The study was prospective and based on students' self-reports, Structural panel modelling and growth curve analyses were used to explore the complex interactions between the variables over time and to create a model of the learning processes. The medical students significantly increased their subjective competence and psychiatric self-confidence during their clerkship in psychiatry and maintained them during their internship. Previous psychiatric experience, attitudes towards psychiatry and current psychiatric experience contributed to subjective psychiatric competence, Competence in turn had a positive effect on self-confidence. Interestingly, those with greater subjective competence also appeared to have more psychiatric experience during their internship. An empirical model of the important aspects of the learning process was developed.