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.