Revisiting the Lake Arrowhead Conference 2026: “Altered States"

October 3, 2026, 9:30 AM - 12:30 PM

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Pre-registration is required. You will receive confirmation and details by email.
This event takes place both in person and on Zoom
No CE/CME will be offered for this event.
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NCP Presents

Revisiting the Lake Arrowhead Conference 2026: “Altered States"

A re-reading of Freud’s thoughts on telepathy in association to additional forms of psychic experience where unconscious transmission is concerned. With the question of telepathy, we wish to highlight a moment Freud not only dared to go where others feared to tread? But where also, in doing so, Freud was perhaps more Freudian than contemporary psychoanalysis anticipates. For indeed, as Freud once wrote in a letter addressed to the American parapsychologist and psychic researcher Hereward Carrington: “... if I had to live my life over again, I should devote myself to psychical research, rather than psychoanalysis...” 1 Do we not experience similar resonances of altered states in contemporary life? Moments where new impossible relations between psychic interiority and the social erupt? For example, in popular culture we have the emergent theory-fiction of cyberpsychosis, an imaginary subjective formation, or sometimes dissociative disorder, precipitating from the augmentation of cybernetic organs into the individual’s body or social authority itself. And where, according its theory-fiction, those who experience cyber-psychosis are less likely to view themselves or those around them as anything beyond multitudes of spare parts, much less fellow speaking beings. Once the topics of ludic spaces and science fiction, theory-fictions today often seem increasingly real as common forms of altered states we all experience. In a world where the interface rapidly disappears in favor of the cybernetic and the 1 Cited from: Brottman, Mikita. Phantoms of the Clinic. Karnac (2011). 3

Automated, it might be increasingly the case that not only can psychoanalysis lead us to further discoveries, such as telepathy— indeed, psychoanalysis might be the best compass for charting a path into the future for beings that signify beyond speech.

This workshop will include a brief reading from the beginning of Lewis Carroll’s (1865) “Alice in Wonderland.” Participants will be invited to listen with free floating attention (Freud, 1912). We will explore how the passage at the beginning of this text might read as a pivotal moment in an analytic session, as we consider the concept of “becoming” (Deleuze, 1968; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) in psychoanalysis. Drawing on historical and literary annotations provided to the text as examples of the specificity and singularity characteristic of a Freudian interpretive process, participants will be encouraged to consider the Freudian analytic act and its consequences, which are both furthered by Lacan and troubled by Deleuze and Guattari. Telescoping with Alice, we will contend with the contradictions inherent in our analytic work, especially as we collectively find ourselves negotiating the currents of “telematization” in social and vocational life (Braunstein, N).

References:

Braunstein, N. (2021). The Current State of Psychoanalysis in Society, Culture and the Clinic. European Journal of Psychoanalysis.
Carroll, L. (2015). The annotated Alice: 150th anniversary deluxe edition (M. Gardner, Ed.; M. Wilson, Annotator). W.W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1865, 1871)
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. (1990). The logic of sense (C. V. Boundas, Ed.; M. Lester & C. Stivale, Trans.). Columbia University Press. [Original work published 1969]
Freud, S. (1953). The interpretation of dreams (J. Strachey, Trans.). The Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1900).
Freud, S. (1958). Recommendations to physicians practising psycho-analysis. In J. Strachey (Ed. & Trans.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud: Vol. 12 (pp. 109–120). Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1912)
Lacan, J. (2006). The instance of the letter in the unconscious, or reason since Freud. In Écrits: The first complete edition in English (B. Fink, Trans. & Ed., ppd. 412–441). W. W. Norton & Company. (Original work published 1957)

Presenters:

Seth Alt is an independent cultural theorist and interdisciplinary researcher who explores the intersections of museums, digital technology, and audience studies. He holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University, with a dissertation titled, “The Pervert’s Guide to the Museum.” In 2025, Seth was published with Oxford University Press inside their volume, Videogames for Mental Health. Seth has curatorial and archival experience from working for both The Autry Museum of the American West and the California Botanic Garden. He is a member and a past delegate of the California Forum of the Lacanian Field — the west coast anglophone chapter of the international school of Lacanian psychoanalysis in Paris.

Jack Brennan is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in Los Angeles. Jack holds two masters degrees in counseling psychology and practicing sociology, and is an alum of the Community Mental Health department at California Institute of Integral Studies and Humboldt State University, Sociology. Jack is a recent graduate of the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles and is a member of SPIIRAL, involved in the reading groups of the California circle of the EFQ, and reading Lacan’s Ecrits and Seminars in quasi-collaboration with the SF Bay Area Lacanian School.

Parker Head is a psychoanalytically oriented clinician who works with adults, adolescents, and young teens. He has an interest in working with lower-functioning patients, particularly those with more borderline or psychotic features. He also facilitates process and social dreaming groups in-person in Beverly Hills. His approach rests on a belief in speech’s ability to give voice to one’s unconscious.

Thomas Helscher is a Training and Supervising Analyst at LAISPS, and on the faculty at LAISPS and WILA. He has written and presented on Transgenerational Transmission of Trauma, on Moral Injury as an alternative to PTSD, and on the frame in psychoanalysis. He teaches and is involved in multiple study groups reading the collected works of Bion, Lacan, and Andre Green. He is in private practice in Los Angeles, CA. His current research interests include editing a collection of essays entitled, “Reframing Psychoanalysis: New Perspectives on Our Changing Clinical Situation,” inspired by the technical challenges of working during the pandemic, and a work on Bion, Andre Green, and Lacan, focusing on the negative, psychotic process, and the infinite.

Andrei Novac MD, DFAPA is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine and a Psychoanalyst, faculty at the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles and a Co-Chair of NCP's Program Committee. Dr Novac is a recent graduate of the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles Adult Psychoanlalytic Trainig program. Dr. Novac was born in Bucharest, Romania and is the son of Holocaust survivors. He immigrated in his 20s to the United States. After medical school, he trained first in pediatrics and then completed a residency and fellowship in psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine. He later held the position of Founding Director of the Traumatic Stress Program at UC, Irvine. Dr. Novac has been a practicing psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and more recently, psychoanalyst. He is the author of over 60 scientific papers in peer review journals and book chapters and has lectured on these topics internationally. He has also published four books of poetry. Currently, he is serving on the review board of JAPA and Neuropsychoanalysis.

Apurva Shah is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, psychoanalytic thinker, movie buff and someone trying hard to make sense of the perpetual chaos around us. He received all his training in psychiatry and psychotherapy (in the post-Freudian school) at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, in the late 80s and early 90s. Soon after he returned to Ahmedabad and started Antarnad Foundation, which offers training for psychoanalytic psychotherapists. He is a co-coordinator of the Film and Mind Series at the New Center for Psychoanalysis but is happy to take the show on the road. He is also a member of the California Forum of the Lacanian Field, the California circle affiliated with GIFRC, Quebec City and of the group-in-formation, At Least Lacan, based in India. In his publications and presentations, Apurva tends to focus on the interfaces of culture and the psyche, illustrating it with examples from movies.

Bettina Soestwohner, Ph.D., Psy.D. holds a doctoral degree in Comparative Literature from UC Irvine and taught literature and language for many years. She is a Research Psychoanalyst and faculty member at the New Center for Psychoanalysis, where she regularly presents in the film series. She taught at the University of California Southern in the Psychology program. A member of the Freudian School of Quebec (EFQ), she is in charge of the work of the EFQ in California. Currently she is doing research for a project on Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater and questions of aesthetics. She is interested in the intersection of studies in daily life with trauma, fantasies and aesthetics.

FEES:

General registration $30 | Member registration $24 | Candidate and Student registration $15

FORMAT:

In person at NCP and on Zoom. For all levels.

RECORDING:

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