ABSTRACT
For Meltzer dreams are dramas of the patient’s internal world that seek to solve an emotional problem. As in Rashomon, in Meltzer’s dream theory what matters is that it contains an aesthetic or dramaturgical theory of points of view. Meltzer knows that the transformation of the visual images of dreams into words—an inter-semiotic translation such as that made by an art critic discussing a painting—is already provided by the patient when he recounts the dream. Meltzer’s attention to aesthetics in the ordinary sense of the word is present from his first contributions, for example, the dialogue with the author reproduced in Adrian Stokes’ Painting and the Inner World, reprinted in The Apprehension of Beauty. The Science of Sleep is a film that seems specially designed to illustrate the aspect of Sigmund Freud’s theory that deals with how the physical stimuli that may disrupt sleep are incorporated and transformed through dreams.
