I would strongly recommend getting to try to see outpatient and individual therapy, as it has been one of the things that really got me interested in psychiatry, and allowed me to see the field was much more than meds-meds-meds in the outpatient setting. This should be possible at just about any school, especially if you're only M1 and have plenty of time to ask around. Most schools are also getting better about including a little bit of outpatient and therapy in clerkships, but have a long way to go.
Outpatient psych is where more than half of psychiatrists practice so you wouldn't want to "forget about it" I don't think! Otherwise great advice above!
I agree that outpatient setting is important because that's where most of psychiatry is practiced. However, there are obvious barriers to shadowing outpatient psychiatry and individual therapy in particular. I really don't see how this can be possible "at just about any school", and physicians at my school are surprisingly open to shadowing in general - but patient interests, including privacy, should come first. If you've had outpatient and therapy shadowing experience, that must be a pretty unusual setup.
As I mentioned above, I've had outpatient psychiatry experience at a free clinic (consultations/med management), and, while I greatly appreciate the experience and try to get involved with the clinic as much as I can, I can also see how this setup of having two or more people with a patient in the exam room is far from ideal for patients. In fact, there've been many instances where I could tell (and attendings confirmed my thinking) that a patient could really benefit from discussing their problems right there and then, but wouldn't be willing to do it in the presence of more than one person. In fact, sometimes an attending would take a few minutes one on one with a patient, and I'm not upset about being left out because it's better for patients.
You can observe elements of therapy even in hospital settings. Eg., I've seen C/L psychiatrists doing bits of therapy (supportive and CBT) with their patients. Although, of course, it's very different from outpatient therapy sessions.
To learn more about therapy, one can undergo therapy oneself. You don't have to have a serious mental disorder to get therapy. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford to have therapy for a whole lot of reasons regardless of their psychopathology or lack thereof, but I highly recommend it if you can. I've been very lucky to have access to infrequent but very high quality and affordable psychodynamic psychotherapy sessions, and not only are they helping me figure some of my **** out, but I've also gained an appreciation of therapy (psychodynamic therapy in particular, even though I used to be quite sceptical of it), and it has deepened my interest in psychiatry.
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I also agree with Monkey House that residents are a great source of information and creating a relationship with them is a good way of "plugging into" a specialty for medical students. Unfortunately, preclinical students are rarely exposed to residents, so, unless there's some preexisting arrangement to put preclinical students in touch with residents (like residents participating in student psychiatry interest group etc.), it's simply easier to first identify faculty members to contact (and they may actually put you in contact with some residents).
