Vermeintlich unvermeidlich: Poetik und Psychologie der Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Abstract

The ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ has become an influential concept in contemporary behavioral psychology and economics. It has not yet been systematically introduced to literary studies, however, even though prophecies count among the long-lasting motifs of Western literature. This article aims to differentiate the psychological model of the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ by first defining its basic narrative structure and identifying various formal realizations of the structure. A second section argues that these variants are historically dependent – they emerge and evolve with time. I will devote special attention to a typically modernist variant, which surfaces around 1900 in short stories by Oscar Wilde, Thomas Mann, and Arthur Schnitzler. These stories evince the general difficulty of distinguishing between the attribution of causality and its modes of narrative representation. As a third section suggests, a poetics of self-fulfilling prophecies might help to appreciate the role that ambiguity and perspectivism play in any cause-and-effect-narratives, may they be fictional or factual. In light of this, the article reflects more generally on the possibilities and challenges of a dialogue between social psychology and literary studies.