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Stream of consciousness

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In psychology and philosophy stream of consciousness, introduced by William James, is the set of constantly changing inner thoughts and sensations which an individual has while conscious.


In literary criticism, the term denotes a literary technique which seeks to describe an individual's point of view using a written version of that individual's psychological stream of consciousness. Stream-of-consciousness writing is strongly associated with the modernist movement.

A few of the most famous works to employ the technique are James Joyce's Ulysses (notably Molly Bloom's solilioquy), Jack Kerouac's "On the Road and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway. Stream-of-consciousness writing is characterised by associative leaps that can make the prose difficult to follow. Typically, writers employ very long sentences which move from one thought to another. Sometimes, writers avoid punctuation altogether in order to prevent artificial breaks in the "stream."