the.com/stream of thought
Thinking out loud, in writing, without the detour through editing.
means A style of writing or narration that follows the mind's raw, unfiltered sequence of thoughts and impressions as they occur, rather than in tidy logical order.
from Coined in psychology before it migrated into literature — the philosopher and psychologist William James used 'stream of consciousness' in his 1890 'Principles of Psychology' to describe the mind as a continuous flow rather than a chain of separate links. Writers later borrowed the image, bending 'consciousness' toward 'thought,' to describe prose that tries to pour that same unbroken current straight onto the page, eddies, interruptions, and all.
- coined by
- William James, psychologist, 1890
- literary use
- Joyce and Woolf let minds wander unpunctuated
- not the same as
- stream of consciousness, which skips grammar entirely
- modern form
- every unedited group chat rant ever sent