To discuss dream theory in the context of film studies means moving from the original, clinical context within which dream theory was initially developed, to an environment established by primarily aesthetic concerns. For Freud, dream research was to be used as a technical means of discovering essential facts concerning the development of neuroses, mental diseases, and other phenomena diverging from "normal" mental life. In his General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Freud presents the study of dreams as an explicit introduction to the Neurosenlehre. Aesthetic considerations have never been at the center of these elaborations just as they have never been central to psychoanalysis. Freud was aware of this but considered it rather a general tendency linked to the psychoanalytical idea, and not as a methodological problem: "The psychoanalyst is only rarely motivated to undertake aesthetic examinations, not even when aesthetics is not restricted to the doctrine of beauty but defined as the doctrine of sentimental qualities." [2]

In film studies it has been demonstrated that dreams can be (aesthetically) fascinating not only because their linguistic or structural elements can be traced back to elements which exist in reality. On the contrary, in films, the language of dream is an object of interest as just "another language," in the same way as one can be fascinated by language from another culture without having a particularly linguistic interest in it. Robert Curry writes that "... [dreams] show a vividness, originality, and insightfulness that quite escapes us in our waking life. If we compare our dreams to the fantasies of waking life, the latter reveal at a glance their stereotyped features and lowly origins in our desires and fears." [3]