The Death Mother and the Singing Bone: A Day of Reflective Group Practice

The Death Mother and the Singing Bone: A Day of Reflective Group Practice. Exploring organisational neglect, symbolic reanimation, and team vitality through story and group process

Tuesday 19 May 2026 | 10:00 – 15:30 BST
Midlands Arts Centre, Birmingham

Overview

A story-led reflective practice day for mental health professionals, exploring the psychic toll of organisational neglect and the symbolic pathways to reanimation within teams and clinical systems. Grounded in group analytic theory and clinical experience, this workshop invites participants into an experiential group space where fairy tale and reflection serve as mirrors for institutional life.

Together, we will consider how despair is metabolised, vitality reclaimed, and new forms of holding imagined—within ourselves, our teams, and the wider organisational matrix.

Learning Aims

This workshop will support participants to:

• Understanding group dynamics and defences
• Working symbolically with loss, vitality, and ethical presence.

Themes for Exploration

Throughout the day, we will explore key dimensions of group life and organisational care through a story-led and analytic lens:

Dynamic Administration
Attending to the symbolic and practical scaffolding that allows a group to form, breathe, and metabolise experience.

Group Attachment
Protecting reflective space and cultivating a culture of support—where safety, trust, and imaginative repair can take root amidst psychic and institutional neglect.

Group Development
Tracing the rhythms, ruptures, and transformations that unfold as a group moves from survival toward presence.

Staying with the Group Task
Working together while holding the tension between individual and collective needs, resisting pseudo-mutuality and fragmentation.

Location of Disturbance
Exploring how conflict reveals buried truths, unspoken griefs, and the potential for reanimation through recognition.

Social Matrix
Mapping the wider organisational field—its defences, distortions, and symbolic residues—and how they shape group life.

Structure of the Day

Welcome & Orientation (09:30 – 10:00)
Arrival and Tea/Coffee

Session One (10:00 – 11:15) —What Holds and What Harms: Introducing the Death Mother
Introduction to the Group Analytic Lens and the Death Mother Archetype
Examining how organisational neglect leaves psychic residues that shape team dynamics and institutional life.

Mid-morning break

Session Two (11:45 – 13:15) — The Singing Bone: Truth-Telling and the Ethics of Burial
Presentation: Narrative Distortion, Pseudo-mutuality, and the Group Matrix
Storytelling: The Singing Bone
Group Dialogue: What truths remain buried in our teams, and what might it take to let them sing?
A session on the symbolic labour of truth-telling, the aesthetics of rupture, and the group’s role in metabolising what has been silenced

Lunch break

Session Three (14:00 – 15:30) — The Skeleton Woman: Reanimation Through Recognition
Presentation: Containment and Imaginative Repair
Storytelling: The Skeleton Woman
Group Dialogue: What restores us when we feel stripped to the bone?
A session on the ethics of presence, the slow return of vitality, and the group’s capacity to hold what has been cast out.

Closing Reflections

Facilitator

Dr. Libby Nugent is a Clinical Psychologist and group work practitioner in group analysis. Her work explores the intersection of clinical practice, group process, and symbolic life, with a focus on organisational health and collective repair.