Engagement with another’s internal world is a complex affair, which can be mutually enriching if one pays attention to “altered states of mind” and to “scale confusion.” Altered states facilitate access to primitive experience. Scale confusion results from our tendency to apply laws and understandings appropriate to one scale to phenomena that are organized on another scale where those laws and understandings do not apply. Using clinical vignettes, Dr. Levin will describe the practical application of these concepts to deepen the treatment relationship and facilitate structural change.

Ronald Levin, MD is a member of The Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He is interested in clinical process as informed by the functional anatomy of the mind, and in the interface between primitive mental processing and the formation of one’s internal world. Dr. Levin is in private practice in Seattle.

Discussant: Jim Basinski, MD

Jim Basinski, MD is an advanced clinical associate at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington and works in the Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit at Harborview Medical Center as well as the Health Care for the Homeless Program at the Third Avenue Clinic. He also has a private practice in Seattle.

Fee: Complimentary