On the one hand the concepts that psychoanalytic texts employ are relayed through culture as components of a discourse, as objects that are circumscribed by definitions in academic and professional writing and used in advertising (Parker, 1995).
In this sense, the discourse constitutes places for subjects to come to be, whether as a child with problems separating from the mother, as a teenager filled with frustration and resentment at authority, or as an older adult reflecting on an unfulfilled life and needs.
On the other hand, the discourse touches an already existing shape of subjectivity for those who write and speak about themselves and others, whether that is in the form of autobiography or in an advice column, in a television interview or on the couch with a therapist.
Parker argues that when we study the way discursive complexes structure cultural phenomena we are also able to understand more of the way they attract and mobilize their subjects.
The discursive complex not only exists for the individual subject, then, but it also provides a means for understanding how psychoanalytic language works in relation to specific cultural phenomena.