And He Showed Me Things: The Transformative Power of Sondheim’s Songs – A Discussion of Philipson and Jones’ Stephen Sondheim: Relational Psychoanalyst of the American Musical Theater

ABSTRACT

In this discussion of Ilene Philipson and D. Bradley Jones’ paper, “Stephen Sondheim: Relational Psychoanalyst of the American Musical Theater,” I contextualize Sondheim’s transformative impact on the Broadway musical and delineate his unparalleled gifts as composer, lyricist and dramatist. I join Philipson and Jones in seeking to explicate the unique potency of his work, offering my own analysis of a Sondheim song using the coauthors’ astute analytic formulations to help uncover why and how it exerts an unusually strong claim on the psyche. I then introduce some of my own interpretations to amplify and complement their arguments, before engaging with their conceit of Sondheim as playing relational analyst to his audience.

KEYWORDS:

• Sondheim
• musical theater
• aesthetics
• Apollonian
• transformation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ An integrated book musical is one in which all aspects of musical theater – dialogue, song, dance, and a well-made story – are artfully blended to achieve a coherent, unified dramatic goal (see Bordman, 1978).

² Recorded on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on June 9, 1976, about two weeks before the conclusion of its six-month run, this video was originally broadcast on Japanese public television. As of this paper's publication date, it can be found on YouTube, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ546PASgHI.

³ I jotted some notes mid-sob.

⁴ Sondheim wittily lampoons this career-long critique of his work in Sunday’s “No Life,” sung by a critical artist and his wife as they struggle vainly to comprehend the point of Seurat’s paintings: “It has no presence, no passion, no life … /Just density without intensity … /It’s so mechanical, methodical/ … So cold/And so controlled/ … All mind, no heart/No life in his art.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matt Aibel

Matt Aibel, LCSW, is faculty/supervisor at National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP), Adelphi University’s Derner School of Psychology, the Institute for Relational Psychoanalysis of Philadelphia, and the St. Petersburg (Russia) Relational Study Group. He is Editor of The IARPP Bulletin and Submissions Editor of Psychoanalytic Perspectives. He practices in New York City.