stream of consciousness
the notion that the contents of subjective consciousness are a continuous, dynamic flow of ideas, images, feelings, sensations, intuitions, and so forth, rather than a series of discrete, static components. Apart from its context in philosophy of mind and studies of perception, the idea of consciousness as a stream also found highly influential expression in the modernism of early 20th-century writers, such as James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf. Also called stream of thought. [introduced in 1890 by William James]