Seth Paxton's Blog

• it took me out of my brain for the one second needed to get back onto the planet • it shot out a spark into the distance that I could then build a path toward • it opened something up in my imagination. 

Because suicide is the result of the death of the imagination. You forget how to dream up other possible futures. You can’t picture new maneuvers, new ways around. Everything is just the catastrophic present and there will never be a time this is not so. That is what kills you. What saves you is a new story to tell yourself about how things could be. »

Adolf Böhm, Cloud and Landscape illustrations for Ver Sacrum Magazine, 1998-1902

Plurality, often also called multiplicity, is "having more than one self in the mind and body" (Eve & Parry, 2021).

Plurality "is not a diagnosis" (Eve, et al., 2023) and is "a broader concept than DID" (Christensen, 2022).

Plurality is "a broad term, which encompasses a range of experiences" because "people have individual conceptualizations of what it means to be ‘more than one’" (Eve, et al., 2023).

Plurality is "a term coined to be more inclusive than only that of traumagenic multiplicity" (Christensen, 2022).

Not all people who experience plurality will identify as a 'plural' or 'multiple.' Plurality is a useful umbrella term for the experience of more-than-oneness "but not necessarily a term reflective of one's identity or self-expression" (Christensen, 2022).

"[N]ot everyone who identifies as multiple will want or require mental health intervention for the condition they experience" (Eve, et al., 2023).

The concept of non-traumagenic plurality does not hurt DID research. "[T]he research confirming DID as a trauma-based disorder is doing just that: confirming traumagenic DID, the disorder, not Plurality, the identity . . . Distinguishing between the two does not need to invalidate either" (Christensen, 2022).

The idea that plurality is inherently disordered is a product of Western culture. "Within Western linear frameworks . . . there has been an emphasis on the ‘healthy self’ being integrated and whole" (Eve & Parry, 2021). "In indigenous cultures, esp. shamanic societies, a polypsychism (i.e. many selves) prevails" (Scharfetter, 2008).

"Drawn to Hidden Light". Read what this painting means below.

This work is about an unseen direction that leads you forward, even when it is not yet defined.

About moving toward something that doesn't fully reveal itself, but already shapes the way.

About light that doesn't appear directly, but exists as a presence, a quiet force that shifts the sense of movement without becoming obvious.

And about that state where you don't see the final point, but you keep moving, because something inside already knows the direction

Oil on canvas, 28x16"