4069 The Other Side 38

"Chalmer has two daughters, one of whom is the same age as Billy. After Dorothy and Chalmer got married, the man abused Billy for a long time, this included rape. Prior to that, his mother's multiple marriages and his father's suicide had already predisposed Billy to multiple personality tendencies. The first split personality, a little girl, Christine, showed up when he was three."

Alice had studied Billy's 24 personalities carefully.

"Among them, the core personality is brown-haired Billy, age 26, but the second personality, 22-year-old Arthur, was English. A rational and cold man, Arthur self-studied physics, chemistry and research medicine. He was even fluent in Arabic. Stubborn and conservative, he considered himself a capitalist. The bespectacled man was the first to discover the existence of the other personalities, and, being in charge, decided who should appear as a representative of the family."

"He spoke Arabic?"

"That's right."

Gong Jie was confused. Did different personalities differ even in nationalities?

Human beings are truly mysterious creatures.

Gong Jie had never known that there was such a thing as multiple personality disorder.

"A number of strange events have been discovered so far. Some people, for example, were originally from M nation, but one day, they woke up speaking authentic Spanish for no apparent reason. Following that, he was diagnosed to be a secondary personality."

Gong Jie finally understood some of it.

"In other words, these personalities are independent entities."

"The world in which a personality exists is not something we can even start to imagine. This information we've been given are verbal accounts collated from the patients during the study. For example, the little girl personality was created by Billy when he was three years old. She was three years old and was often punished by the teacher by being made to stand in the corner of the classroom. The blue-eyed blonde was an English girl, very clever, but suffered from dyslexia and liked to make drawings of flowers and butterflies."

"These personalities were also verbally described by the patient?"

Alice said, "This is what's special about Billy. Billy drew all these portraits too."

Gong Jie still found all of this hard to believe.

"Amongst so many personalities, there was one named Phillip, 20 years old, violent nature, New Yorker with a thick Brooklyn accent. There was another named Kevin, 20 years old as well, had a scheming mind; he planned the robberies at Gray's Drugstore. This personality, who was a blonde, enjoyed writing."

"In other words..." Gong Jie summed it up. "Each of the 24 personalities was different. Some were little girls, some were violent men, and some were gentle writers. The 24 personalities each played a different role. But the outside world would not be able to tell at all. Only he himself knew."

"Uh huh."

"Do they hallucinate?"

Alice studied his expression and spoke slowly, "How frightening does it get when someone with split or multiple personalities acts up?"

"Just an example."

"When you're driving, you suddenly realize that you don't remember what had happened or part of what had happened along the way."

"When you're listening to someone, you suddenly realize you can't hear part or all of what he's saying."

"Constant, severe headaches, especially when the two situations mentioned take place."

"You find yourself in a place but don't remember how you got there."

"You find yourself wearing unfamiliar clothes but have no idea how you ended up wearing them."