Instructions
Unit IV introduced you to the work of William James. James was the first to describe consciousness as a stream, a continuous succession of experiences. He saw the most significant function of consciousness to be the role it played in selecting what to pay attention to.
James saw the stream of consciousness as an unending parade of thoughts, feelings, images, ideas, sensations, conceptions, and emotions that appear before our conscious awareness and then pass away.
For this assignment you will experiment with your own stream of consciousness.
Write about the following prompts:
- Discuss a very early childhood memory.
- Were there childish words like “moo-cow” that were used in your family?
- What were several obsessions or preoccupations you had when you were in fourth or fifth grade?
- What did you worry about?
- What ideas kept recurring?
- What things did you always do?
- What words particularly fascinated you?
- What subjects did you like in school? What memories are associated with those subjects?
- What books or games were your mainstays?
- What sayings of people in your family influenced you?
- What did your mother always say?
- What did your father always say?
- Your Aunt Mary?
- What did your teacher do one day?
- What painful thing happened in school?
- What especially happy moment can you recall?
- Discuss other particularly cherished or embarrassing memories you have from childhood.
Please note, you do not have to give a complete response to all 10 questions. Let these questions be a guide to following your stream of consciousness rather than a strict template.
Now that you have written down a stream-of-consciousness response to the questions above, reflect on your response by asking why you remember these things and not other things? Do these memories reveal anything about yourself or tell you who you are? Have you discovered something about yourself by looking at them?
Write up these memories and your reflection on these memories in a stream-of-consciousness essay. Also, make sure to provide an introduction which introduces and summarizes James’s concept of personal consciousness, changes in consciousness, and continuity of thought.
Your assignment must be at least one page in length not including the title and reference pages, use at least one source such as the textbook or an article from the CSU Online Library, and use APA style formatting throughout.
Textbook:
Frager, R., & Fadiman, J. (2013). Personality and personal growth (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.