Unsettling colonial mentalities in family therapy: Entering negotiated spaces

Abstract

This article discusses the settler colonial roots of family therapy, positing that much of what is considered the standard or ideal family form comes from colonialism. Utilising settler colonial theory as a guide, I identify how the colonial nations, built through the violent exclusion of Indigenous and exogenous peoples, utilised the family to further their goals. Rather than suggest settler colonialism was an historic event, I consider how it continues today, privileging white families of European descent. To move the conversation forward on how white therapists from majoritised cultures can engage with racialised clients, I describe the negotiated spaces as a meeting ground where therapists and clients navigate differing worldviews. In these negotiations, our clients trust us, and to be accountable to this trust, we can unsettle the influence of settler colonialism. To conclude this paper, I discuss four possible pathways to begin the complicated process of unsettling.

Practitioner Points

• Settler colonialism contributed to the standardisation of the nuclear family, informing the foundations of family therapy.
• Establishing a ‘negotiated space’ in therapy can encourage ethical engagement between therapist and client as they navigate differences in culture, knowledge and meaning.
• To ethically be in the negotiated spaces, therapists from majoritised cultures can ‘unsettle’ settler colonialism’s influence.
• Learning personal and disciplinary relationships to settler colonialism, developing cultural humility and attending to power is the first step in unsettling.