Turkish Muslim Healers: A Qualitative Investigation of Hocas and Their Methods
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Turkish Muslim Healers: A Qualitative Investigation of Hocas and Their Methods Deniz Canel Çınarbaş1 · Ezgi Tuna2 · Yagmur Ar‑Karci3
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract A vast majority of Turkish individuals are Muslim, and several Turkish individuals refer to traditional healers to get help for medical and psychological problems. The purpose of the present study was to investigate Turkish traditional healing methods and to delineate the kinds of presenting problems that the clients bring to healers, methods used by the healers, the healing process, and the effect of healing on the clients. For this purpose, 11 participants were interviewed. The data were analyzed using the consensual qualitative research method. Nine domains emerged from the interviews: symptoms, diagnosis, etiology, treatment, response to treatment, characteristics of healers, clients’ beliefs and desire to be healed, all healing coming from Allah (God), and characteristics of jinns. The findings were discussed in light of Kleinman’s (Patients and healers in the context of culture: an exploration of the borderland between anthropology, medicine, and psychiatry, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1980) illness explanatory model and characteristics of Turkish culture. Keywords Traditional healers · Muslim healers · Turkish culture
Introduction Traditional healing methods have been used around the world for both psychological and medical problems (Moodley and West 2005; Muhamad et al. 2012). Several researchers investigated the role of traditional healers in Africa (e.g., Ngoma et al.
* Deniz Canel Çınarbaş [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, Middle East Technical University, Social Sciences Building, 06800 Ankara, Turkey
2
Department of Psychology, Çankaya University, Ankara, Turkey
3
Department of Psychology, TED University, Ankara, Turkey
13
Vol.:(0123456789)
Journal of Religion and Health
2003), in Middle East (e.g., Rakhawy and Hamdi 2010), and among American Muslims (e.g., Padela et al. 2012). Research across various countries showed that among traditional healing methods, prayer and spiritual healing are especially common in Muslim communities (Montazeri et al. 2007) and are used for a wide range of psychological and physiological problems, including breast cancer (Muhamad et al. 2012; Suhami et al. 2016) and schizophrenia (Yazıcı et al. 2016). Although there are several studies that explored the frequency of seeking indigenous help among Turkish Muslims (e.g., Öztürk et al. 2005; Ünal et al. 2001; Yaşan and Gürgen 2004), the authors of the present study were not able to find an investigation of Turkish traditional healing methods that delineate the kinds presenting problems, healing methods used, and their effect. Accordingly, the purpose of the present study was to qualitatively investigate Turkish traditional healing methods, clients’ reasons for seeking traditional healing, the healing process, and the effect of healing on the clients. In Kleinman’s view (
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