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| A ‘nuclear reactor’ of our mind: Stream of consciousness examined from a Psychological & Literary Perspective |
 PRINTABLE VERSION |
Extrapolating the idea of personal consciousness, our seemingly pallid minds are not as punctilious as people might think. In fact they exhibit a plethora of reactions to different stimulation's; when combined with the human abilities of perception, sensation and association, the stream of consciousness is the result. Most people will be stupefied by the translucence of their individual streams of thought, which are so tacit that even a person with remarkable sagacity finds this subject matter abstruse. Although many people claim that they have the ability to read another person’s mind, the multitude of capturing one’s thought process is tantamount to recreating the conditions of which thought is created from one’s surroundings. To add to the difficulty, many inner-workings of the mind fluctuate periodically, and it is almost impossible to simultaneously translate one’s thought from his consciousness and retain the same state of mind. The fact that we are inured to our system of thinking seems trivial. However, to most psychologists, the concept that we are able to decode our thoughts is merely legerdemain. There will always be a perpetual rearrangement in our consciousness, which makes it ineffable to describe one’s stream of thought. The closest mock-up of a person’s ‘stream’ can only be understood by focusing on fragments of thoughts. It would be appropriate to conclude that various thoughts join to become a stream, yet it is also inappropriate at the same time since the thoughts are not being held together by a force, rather, it is the natural tendency of one’s mind to connect thoughts within a stream in a subtle way.
To that end, rather than describing a ‘chain’ or ‘train’ of thoughts, it would be more appropriate to conclude that a person’s consciousness flows. Metaphorically, thought belongs to the solid state. When our ‘stream’ is closely packed together, it creates a definitive image and in our subconscious mind, creating what humans call feeling and sensation. The ‘entropy’ of our thoughts increases as the interactivity between our consciousness and perceptions increases, which is why our thoughts are constantly effusive and effervescent. Any hiatus or disruptions will divert the flow of one’s stream, and in the process, contaminates the stream of consciousness. It is worthy to remark that transposing our streams of thought through mediums like words and paintings defile and even expunge the underpinnings of a person’s consciousness.
PART 2: THE LITERARY PERSPECTIVE
After an analysis from the psychological perspective, it is now apt for us to view stream of consciousness from a literary perspective. Although the ‘stream’ essentially retains its meaning, the literary technique for writers to transpose a character’s thought is not called stream of consciousness. It only refers to the fact that each character from various passages attempts to render the flow of their thoughts into words. Most writers prefer to utilize interior monologues or soliloquies, since it enables a reader to directly comprehend a character’s thoughts. Also attributed to the modernist movement, this method of narration instantly found its way to appeal most authors, most notably, prominent writers such as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and William Faulkner etc. developed a penchant for the technique. Various stream of consciousness writings are commonly deemed as a distinct branch of interior monologue that are characterized by leaps in sentence structure and punctuation; this combination makes the reading of a character’s thoughts difficult to follow since the monologues are not wholly developed. Throughout the pinnacle of the Modernist movement, stream of consciousness writing symbolized a key philosophical burden. Since many Modernist authors were concerned with the unreliable nature of objectivity, numerous novelists shunned omniscient narrative and regarded it as an ‘impure’ literary technique. Thus they increasingly relied on interior monologue as the closest approximation to truth even though it limited a character’s expression. The use of interior monologues was also motivated by the prevailing interest in Freudian Psychology. In a psychological sense, stream of consciousness is employed to explain convoluted mental patterns, the repetition of intricate ideas, subconscious motivation as well as association, and repressed memory.
Several years before William James came up with the idea of ‘stream of consciousness’, Édouard Dujardin had penned his novel Les Lauriers sont coupes in 1888. Dujardin’s novel attempted to trace the mind of the protagonist without providing an omniscient narration. Intense scrutiny from literary critics revealed that some elements of the book were written using stream of consciousness. Dujardin’s work is generally considered as the first example of a stream of consciousness writing in the modern era. The publications of the Freudian, Jungian and William James’ concepts on consciousness, coupled with May Sinclair’s pioneering the use of the psychological term, numerous works of literature began to surface. In the midst of copious number of novels published using the stream of consciousness technique, several of the most prominent ones are: James Joyce’s Ulysses, Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room, Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage, and William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. But perhaps the most celebrated of them all is the soliloquies of Molly Bloom, a character who resembles Penelope from the epic poem Odysseus, in Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The following is an excerpt from her famous soliloquy.
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Writer Profile
Iman Ng
I was born in Hong Kong on June 13th, 1989. Having lived in this Asian metropolis for 13 years and witnessed its transfer of sovereignty from Britain to the PRC, I developed my critical thinking skills about governance and international relations from these life-changing events.
My educational experience is undoubtedly one of the more interesting aspects of my life. I was brought up in a Cantonese-speaking environment and began my formal English instruction in 1996. After 1997, however, my school ceased using English as the medium of instruction and instituted Mandarin as the former's replacement in situ. I did not learn English formally (though I did study English privately for 4 years) until 2001 when I started my 7th Grade education at a Catholic-Jesuit secondary school.
In April 2002 my family decided to immigrate to the United States, after my father had almost lost his job. It was the only choice my family had, given how woeful the economy had been at that time. With great reluctance we left Hong Kong in July 2002, and settled in Rockville, Maryland, USA, where I have been living ever since.
One of my greatest passions is International Politics. I would like to learn more about the human condition and the state of the world today; we are intrinsically born into this Westphalian state system and there's no way to escape it, given how rampant globalization is and how constantly it is affecting our lives on a daily basis.
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