I don't know if what I'm about to share sheds light on anything, but here goes:

I'm in my 40's, and I have a photo of myself when I was about 7 on my desk. (I want to add other photos in the corner on the wall of me and my friends doing things in the past, places I've traveled, etc. but haven't gotten to it yet.)

The reasons I put it there:

- One, it's a reminder of the 'clean slate', and my inner child. Who I was before a lot of s*** hit the fan and my family life was destroyed. I am trying to heal from a lot of difficult experiences and loss, and I put that photo there to remind me that I was once a child, full of love and potential, who didn't feel negative about herself -- and maybe as an adult I can get back there again somehow.

- Two, the photo was taken by my father, who at the time wasn't the horribly abusive person he was about to become but a person I remembered as loving photography. He was playing around with his camera a lot and taught me how to use it.

- Three, I keep it around to show the kids who visit here from time to time who are naturally curious about what I looked like when I was younger. They also tend to want to see photos of me when I was a teenager, or in my 20's, or getting married. So I indulge this curiosity if it comes up.

That's pretty much it. I don't view my own display of it as creepy, but then I could add here that it isn't a really large portrait and maybe no bigger than 4 x 6". I think having one large portrait of when someone is young is perhaps a bit weird -- but it was also a more common style of portrait to hang (culturally) back in the 1960's and 1970's, so the person having it may just be continuing to display the same photos their parents put up ages ago.