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#171036 10/30/07 07:07 PM
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Is there a word for when a person's fear of something causes them to take a course of action that turns that fear into a reality?
Example: Someone who's afraid that the person they love will leave them and find another lover, smothers them with attention and shows their fear through jealousy. This motives their lover to leave and find someone new.

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In the study of folklore, there is a tale type called the Patient Griselda where a jealous husband tests his wife's fidelity in a Job-like series of escalating torments. (The tale appears in the Decameron and the Clerk's Prologue in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.) I don't know of a generic term for this sort of thing, though.


Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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I don't know of a single word, but it sounds like a "self-fulfilling prophecy." Sort of like how the stock market works.

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Originally Posted By: Rintrah
I don't know of a single word, but it sounds like a "self-fulfilling prophecy." Sort of like how the stock market works.


That's the expression that came to mind for me, too.

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Another term for the dilemma might be "shooting oneself in the foot." It's also similar to the "Oedipus effect."

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Originally Posted By: James Love
Is there a word for when a person's fear of something causes them to take a course of action that turns that fear into a reality?

The word I always use is phobicautodidactictransfiguration
And when I use me special word I always get ovation.

When Dukes and maharajas
Pass the time of day with me
I say me special word and then
They ask me out to tea.

Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay
Um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ay!


Last edited by themilum; 10/31/07 10:57 PM.
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Quote:
phobicautodidactictransfiguration


This sounds anyway far less painfull then shooting yourself in the foot.
The little poem is a cure for any fear, unless you fear crumbling your coockies.

Last edited by BranShea; 11/01/07 11:10 AM.
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Your precociousness has me on my feet!

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Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

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Sure Hrdra, that's easy for you to say.

But can you rub your tummy while patting your head?

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