This book offers a new theory of music as a form of social bond analogous to language as it is understood according to the Lacanian orientation in psychoanalysis. It presents contemporary examples that look at how music has become both a powerful locus of discontent and a form of orientation.

Series Editors' Preface -- Preface --   -- Introduction: Fear of music -- Amusia -- Music and the love of the master -- The Marriage of Figaro and Freudian melophobia -- Dance and "condansation": Che Guevara's a-rhythmia -- Groundhog Day: the earworm and the love song -- From symptom to synthomy -- The audio unconscious -- Hank Williams's cough -- From Speaking Beings to Talking Heads -- The Madness of Economic Realism -- Primal scream: dissonance and repetition -- Capitalism and psychosis I: the Nash equilibrium -- Michel Foucault and the beauty of the absolute -- Bach's Little Fugue -- Decomposing the voice -- American Psycho and Phil Collins -- The Ride of the Valkyries -- Screamadelica -- Flower of hate: the lack in The Beatles -- The murder of John Lennon -- Echo -- Unlistenable -- The braindance of the hikikomori -- The three delusions -- Coda: The hum