Stream of consciousness (psychology)

Common card · No. 430917

The metaphor "stream of consciousness" is commonly used to describe the continuous flow of thoughts within first-person subjective experience. Research studies have shown that humans only experience one mental event at a time, as a fast-moving mind-stream. The full range of thoughts and sensory experiences one can be aware of forms the content of this "stream". The term was coined by Alexander Bain in 1855, when he wrote in The Senses and the Intellect, "The concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of consciousness (on the same cerebral highway) enables those of different senses to be associated as readily as the sensations of the same sense". The term is most commonly associated with American psychologist and philosopher William James, who popularised it in his 1890 work The Principles of Psychology.

Read on Wikipedia