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In psychology and philosophy, the term stream of consciousness was introduced by William James, and refers to 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.

Two of the most famous works to employ the technique are James Joyce's Ulysses (notably Molly Bloom's solilioquy) 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 to avoid making artificial breaks in the "stream."