The Sister and the System: A Fairy Tale of Relational Change

“The dwarf carried in the ravens’ dinner on seven little plates, and in seven little cups.” Illustration by Albert Weisgerber, published in Kinder-und, publication date unknown. Originally published in German.

The Seven Ravens is a lesser known Grimm tale that begins with a father who has seven sons and longs for a daughter. When she is finally born, frail and sickly, the father sends the sons to fetch water for her baptism. In their haste, they drop the jug into the well and don’t return. Fearing the worst, the father curses them in frustration, wishing them to become ravens, and the curse takes hold.

Years later, the daughter, now grown, learns of her brothers’ fate and sets out alone to rescue them. Her journey is archetypal: she seeks help from the sun, moon, and stars, ultimately receiving a magical bone to open the Glass Mountain where her brothers are trapped. When she loses the bone, she sacrifices her own finger to open the door. An act of bodily devotion that underscores the tale’s somatic and relational themes.

Inside, she leaves a token (her ring) in their drinking cup. When the ravens return and find the ring, they recognize her presence. Her appearance breaks the spell, and the brothers are restored to human form. They return home together, the family reunited.

It’s a tale of relational repair through sacrifice, not self-actualisation. The sister’s silence, endurance, and bodily offering contrast sharply with the lone-hero arc. It’s not about her becoming someone, it’s about restoring the group constellation. The sister’s quiet sacrifice in The Seven Ravens mirrors the unseen work of repairing group bonds, a process less about individual heroics and more about tending to the relational web, as group-analytic theory suggests.

When a plant is wilting, we rarely blame the plant itself; instead, we’re told to change its environment: adjust the light, the soil, the water. But what does this mean in a group or social context, where the "environment" is made up of other people?

When we say "change the system," we're often, in practice, saying "change other people" - "change their minds, behaviours, or values." This is the language of politics - whoever has the most influence or power (the number of people who will follow) dictates whose needs in the group are attended to. However, the system is not some inert backdrop, it is the web of human relationships, attitudes, and shared meanings. So when one person is affirmed, all must adapt. It is a bold, if not delusional person, who believes other's world view have nothing to offer.

This creates a paradox: as to "change the environment" for an individual or sub group means, then, to influence all the people who comprise the environment, including those individuals being supported. (I am not stuck in a traffic jam, I am the traffic jam.) In individualist frameworks, this can quickly collapse into trying to persuade or outmaneuver others, as if the system is a sum of atomic individuals to be won over. Such calls to “change the system” risk fueling narcissism, where seeking validation or deflecting responsibility overshadows relational repair.

As such for relational change to occur-we must engage as a crucible of negotiation and not just instantly offer up blind support. In The Seven Ravens, the father’s curse born of self-centered frustration hints at this, fracturing the family until the sister’s sacrifice restores it. Only by tending to the group’s connective tissue (the way we relate to each other) can we shift the patterns where minds meet.

The work is less about forcing minds to change and more about reshaping the patterns in which those minds meet.

We are so accustomed to prioritising the individual that we overlook how group function is the true foundation of social constructs. In group-analytic terms, the “social unconscious” (Weinberg, 2010) offers a potent lens: we are interwoven by shared norms, silences, and stories we may not consciously recognise, but that shape the analytic matrix. When those norms overemphasise individual determination, we risk neglecting the symbolic and somatic language of collective processes, the real engine behind transformation.

While individualism can foster innovation and personal agency, it risks isolating us from the relational webs that sustain social cohesion. In groups, focusing solely on the individual can obscure the deeper patterns, like shared silences or norms, that shape collective behavior.

If individualism is both the lens and the target, critiques risk reinforcing the very isolating logic they aim to unravel. It’s like trying to imagine the horizon while trapped inside a mirror maze.

In therapeutic or cultural discourse, this often manifests as affirmative practice with calls to “find your voice” or “speak your truth” . Whilst meaningful in their own right, these can sidestep the relational field that holds and co-creates those processes. Without a group-oriented epistemology, we overlook how identity, suffering, and repair are actually group-authored.

Foulkes provides insight saying that the individual mind emerges within the group matrix, not apart from it. To meaningfully “attack” individualism, we need frameworks born of relationality: rituals, shared myths, somatic co-regulation, collaborative dreaming. Fairy tales, in their pre-modern forms, often stage these very processes: community as crucible, not backdrop.

In the fairytale of the seven ravens it is the sister’s sacrifice of her finger, a powerful emblem of the personal cost, that facilitates the group repair. It’s not just a physical act but a symbol of surrendering individual comfort or identity for the collective good. This "bodily devotion," ties into the tale’s somatic undertones, repair isn’t abstract but visceral, requiring a tangible offering. This mirrors the often unseen labour in groups: the quiet compromises or losses individuals endure to restore harmony. The finger, once part of her, becomes the key to unlocking the brothers’ freedom, suggesting that personal sacrifice can bridge alienation within a system. The sister’s finger, sacrificed to unlock the Glass Mountain, might symbolise the personal costs group members bear to mend collective fractures, small but significant losses that restore the whole. The mountain itself, transparent yet impenetrable, reflects group dysfunction: visible to all, yet requiring vulnerability to heal.

The Glass Mountain also stands as a multifaceted symbol of the barriers within group dynamics. Its transparency implies that the issues or fractures in the group are visible, everyone can see the ravens trapped inside, yet it remains impenetrable without the right tool (or sacrifice). This reflects the complexity of relational repair: understanding a group’s dysfunction is one thing, but penetrating and resolving it demands effort, often painful or costly. The mountain’s glassy fragility could also hint at the delicate nature of trust in groups, apparently solid, yet easily shattered. Leaning into this symbol helps us see how groups require both clarity and vulnerability to heal.

Finally the brothers’ transformation into ravens and their restoration encapsulate the ebb and flow of group cohesion. As ravens, they might represent embodied alienation, group members reduced to shadows of themselves when bonds break, their humanity obscured by disconnection. The sister’s act of leaving a token in their cup is a subtle yet profound gesture of recognition, breaking the spell through presence rather than force. This mirrors how groups heal not through grand heroics but through small, intentional acts of reconnection. The sibling constellation reflects the tension between independence (the brothers’ initial haste) and interdependence (their reliance on the sister’s loyalty), a dynamic central to any group’s survival.

The Seven Ravens is a tale of solitary action, yes, but embedded in familial loyalty and collective restoration. The sister’s long, silent journey isn’t self-actualization for its own sake. It’s an act of repair for the broken sibling constellation, a movement toward group cohesion. There’s also a profound sense of sacrifice and endurance in service of reweaving the group, not elevating the self.

This tale invites us to consider how change in social systems emerges not from individual heroics but from the slow, often unseen work of reweaving connections. It is the sister (the outnumbered feminine) in The Seven Ravens, who restores her family through quiet endurance and sacrifice. Groups too often have figures or small subgroups who are silently working away in the background tending to the relational fabric to heal.

So when the next time someone says "change the system," perhaps what they really need is to change the quality of relatedness itself (the field in which all members are entangled) rather than imagining the task as a contest of political will.