Convinced that cultural criticism need not merely be an academic exercise but can help improve people s lives Mark Bracher proposes a method of cultural criticism which is based on the principles of psychoanalytic treatment and which aims to alter subjectivity and behavior.In this forceful and engagingly written book Bracher first accounts for the failure of contemporary cultural criticism to achieve significant social impact. He then offers a model of analysis that draws on Lacan s theoretical insights into the structure of subjectivity and the psychological functions of discourse asserting that the use of this model can promote collective psychological change. While cultural criticism has generally focused on texts Bracher instead analyzes audiences actual responses--to a variety of discourses from high as well as popular culture: the political speeches of Ronald Reagan and Jesse Jackson anti-abortion propaganda pornography Keats s To Autumn and Conrad s Heart of Darkness. Through analyzing these responses Bracher is able to uncover the unconscious identifications and fantasies of the respondents--an intervention that he argues has the potential for altering subjectivity. In his view such a method of cultural criticism is both unusually powerful and ethnically defensible since instead of attacking or upholding a group s values it reveals the psychological conflicts manifest in responses to particular texts.Lacan Discourse and Social Change will be essential reading for students as well as specialists in such fields as cultural criticism feminist theory literary theory psychoanalytic criticism reader-response criticism reader-response criticism and Lacanian theory.