Counselling Through a Colonial Lens: A Critique of Past and Present

Counselling is often presented as a neutral and benevolent practice. Across cultures, however, it has always been shaped by the dominant values and ideologies of its time (Lefley, 2005; Osborn, 2008). In Australia, the history of non-First Nations counsellors working with First Nations reveals deep ethical failures. From the Stolen Generations to today’s codes of conduct, counselling has often operated as a colonial technology: silencing First Nation Australians, pathologising their worldviews, and forcing compliance with Western norms. This essay critiques both past and present practices. It examines the failures of current codes of conduct, the colonial roots of mainstream theories, and the specific dangers of approaches like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). Finally, it highlights the urgent need for counsellors to dismantle harmful grand narratives and learn from practices such as narrative therapy that resist colonisation and restore story, memory, and kinship.

Counselling is often framed as neutral, scientific, and benevolent. Across cultures, however, it has always been shaped by the dominant values and ideologies of its time (Lefley, 2005; Osborn, 2008). In Australia, the history of non-First Nations counsellors working with First Nations reveals deep ethical failures. Far from being neutral, Western counselling has long operated as colonial technology: erasing worldviews, enforcing assimilation, and branding First Nations as deficient. Instead of recognising the structural and historical roots of intergenerational trauma, Western psychology has pathologised First Nations’ pain, miscasting survival responses as deficits to be corrected. Current codes of conduct gesture toward cultural competence but remain largely performative, failing to name colonisation or address its ongoing effects. Theoretical frameworks such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) reproduce neoliberal logics, individualising distress and ignoring systemic violence, land theft, and intergenerational grief. In this way, mainstream therapy has often normalised oppression rather than dismantled it. This essay critiques counselling in Australia as historically complicit in colonisation and invested in harmful grand narratives. It concludes by considering narrative therapy as a practice grounded in story and community that can deconstruct those dominant discourses and open space for First Nations voices.