Notq Arrives at the Clinic: How Druze Therapists Deal with the Cultural Phenomenon of Remembering and Talking about Previous Incarnation Among the Druze in Israel

Abstract

This article deals with the cultural idiom Notq-the remembering and talking about a previous incarnation among the Druze. The study focuses on the interface between the dominant Western psychological perspective and the Druze ethnopsychology. Sixteen Druze therapists including social workers and psychologists were interviewed about the Notq and how it arises in the clinic. The research shows that while the therapists understand and respect Notq, they mostly suspend it and only some work with it. The findings reveal that the Druze therapists are confronted with a complex conflict: they have no internal-cultural legitimacy to reject Notq, and they have no external-professional basis for accepting it. This study, in using the example of the Notq, illustrates important issues that are addressed by transcultural psychologists and psychological anthropologists; cultural idioms; minority therapists; the dominance of Western psychological knowledge; and the interface between psychology and religion.

Child placement in the community: Socio‐religious challenges for Druze social workers in Israel

“…However, ethnic compatibility between the therapist and the client is not a guarantee for the success of the treatment (Maramba & Nagayama Hall, 2002). This encounter involves many dilemmas and challenges, which also arose in this study, such as living in the same community, which blurs the boundaries between the personal and the professional (Goode‐Cross & Grim, 2016), and may cause tension, especially in a collective society where the therapists worry for their good name and their image in society; the expectations of members of the community that the therapist will understand them and share similar beliefs (Natoor & Shoshana, 2020); and the friction between the values of the profession, which are essentially ‘Western‐secular’, and the cultural–local values of the therapist and the patient (Elsayed et al, 2022). The interviewees in this study were not immune to these challenges, which further complicated the dilemmas they faced in deciding whether to remove at‐risk children from their homes.…”