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Stream Of Consciousness Essay

Decent Essays

First associated with the modernist movement, stream of consciousness is a form of interior monologue which its goal is to represent a leading consciousness in a narrative novel, a typical fiction novel. This representation of consciousness includes perceptions or impressions, thoughts which are incited by outside world, and parts of random unattached thoughts. Stream of consciousness writing technique often lacks correct punctuation, favoring a looser and a more incomplete style. The invention of this term has generally been credited to the American psychologist William James, older brother of novelist Henry James. It was used originally by psychologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to describe the personal awareness of someone’s mental processes. In The Principles of Psychology, Chapter IX, The Stream of …show more content…

Such words as chain do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed, it flows. A river or a stream is the metaphor by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness , or of subjective life” (William James, 1890). It is helpful at the beginning to distinguish stream of consciousness from free association. Stream of consciousness describes metaphorically the phenomenon-the continuous flow of sensations, impressions, images, memories and thoughts-experienced by each person, at all levels of consciousness, and which is generally associated with each person’s subjectivity. On the other hand, free association is a process in which apparently random information accumulated by a subject allow connections to be done from the different aspects of consciousness of mind to the conscious mind of that subject. Translated and mapped to the space of narrative literatures, free association is one element in the text that is used to signify the stream of

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