summary 
Over the last 25 years in the Netherlands the residency training programme for psychiatry has been concerned primarily with teaching students to use practice guidelines, providing science education, promoting internationalisation and satisfying society's requirement for transparency. This has led to the transformation of the classical training programme with its paternalistic 'master-apprentice' relationship to a programme in which the required professional competencies are taught and assessed by supervisors who in the future will need to be explicitly qualified in particular areas. The dramatic increase in the number of women wanting to become psychiatrists has made it clear that the classical training programme puts a heavy burden on students who are struggling to combine private life with a heavy work-load and enthusiasm for their chosen subject. The compulsory personal therapy in the curriculum may be helpful in solving this problem.