Mood: Big Thonk

In contrast to the comparison between William James and Sigmund Freud, I believe that William James’ “Stream of Consciousness” would more accurately represent the idea of a person or self. In certain aspects, they do compliment each other and aid each other with similar general ideas, such as our unconscious minds are communicating through us in many different ways that we may not be aware of and how our flights and perches of thoughts are continuous and certain unethical thoughts often gets oppressed by social acceptance and certain social constructs. As well as how both psychologists support the idea of how our dreams are not solely from instincts and we still use our conscious brain to process all the information, and even creating the dream. An argument is that “everyone you see in your dreams are people you’ve seen in real life, as your brains cannot create and paint people just from ‘imagination’,” no matter if you recognize them in your dreams or not. William James’ theory of “Stream of Consciousness “ mainly focuses on our thoughts constantly flowing through our conscious mind, akin to a river stream that is always in motion. Arguing that “You never step in the same river twice”, indicating that the river stream goes on forever and never stops, just like your thoughts. Yes, even when we are sleeping, we are still using parts of our brains to think and to dream. He was the first to describe consciousness as a stream or a continuous succession of experiences. James also compares the “Stream of Consciousness” to a “bird’s life”, using the analogy of our transitive and substantive thoughts as the Flights and Perching of a bird in their lifetime. A bird is always either in flight or perched at a specific location, similar to how our thoughts are always going from one to another or focusing on one specific conscious thought. This example can be seen in Mrs. Dalloway, where the character Septimus, are often seen either perching by the thoughts and the flashbacks from World War I, and his flight of thoughts when he is observing his wife Lucrezia, and every single little detail about her. This represents a clear example of the transitive and substantive conscious thoughts. The “bird’s life” comparison supports his idea of “Stream of Consciousness” as the “states are always changing” and the thoughts are constantly unfolding.