4348 The Other Side 317

However, even if the treatment is successful, external pressure may cause the personality to dissociate again.

In addition, because the patient is highly suggestive, hypnosis is often used to summon the patient's different personalities for treatment. However, this only treats the symptoms and not the cause.

In fact, the inner dissociation was nothing special. It was a common phenomenon. Most people would have had some experience with internal dissociation. For example, one may be engrossed in a wonderful novel and completely immersed in the plot, unaware of what is happening around them. There is also daydreaming, being in a daze, meditation, amnesia, and so on. However, these are not disorders, but ordinary daily mental activity.

However, multiple personalities would be the epitome of such states.

"I got it." Alice stood up. "Well then, let's start with brain imaging!" She had never carried out brain imaging for Youyou.

The Hurricane Group Medical Center was comprehensively equipped, hence it was no problem performing any sort of examination.

As long as the boy was willing to cooperate.

Romanka nodded.

…

After this, Alice and Gong Fan had a brief discussion.

When Gong Fan heard that they were going to perform brain imaging, he was a little resistant at first. However, after Alice explained what a brain imaging was, Gong Fan agreed.

Not that he didn't trust Alice, but he didn't really trust Romanka.

Since Alice was there, and the little guy gave her some face.

Alice led Gong Fan into the examination room. It was pitch dark, except for the dim glow of ghostly lights.

There was only one large instrument in the large examination room. It was like an MRI machine, though it wasn't.

The two instruments looked very similar.

Alice instructed Gong Fan to lie down on it. His head was placed in a white helmet-like head covering. Alice pressed a button, and Gong Fan felt himself slowly being moved into the device.

"Lie down obediently. Don't move until I say so."

"Alright."

Gong Fan was very cooperative and agreed.

Alice walked out of the room. Professor Romanka was sitting in front of the display, looking at the image that had formed. A few dispersed black dots were seen against the screen's blank background.

"Look here."

Professor Romanka tapped the screen gently. "There are significant differences in the brain images of patients with dissociative identity disorder and those with high or low hallucination propensity. DID indicates dissociative identity disorder. CH indicates high hallucination propensity. CL indicates low hallucination propensity. TIS indicates trauma-related status. NIS indicates neutral status."

Alice stared at the image and suddenly gasped.

"Does that mean there are five personalities inhabiting the boy?"

"There are four active personalities."

"Four!? How is that possible?"

Alice was clearly unconvinced. "Usually, there are only two personality manifesting in turns, and they are Youyou and Gong Fan. Together with the personality that manifested that day, there are at most three. So how did four come about?"

"Are you sure you can tell the other personalities apart when they appear?"

Alice actually felt her blood run cold at that.

"What you're saying then, is that the other personalities have actually appeared without us noticing. Were we just unaware of it?"

Just thinking about it made Alice realize how scary multiple personality disorder was.

If there were indeed more personalities hiding within him, they would have been lurking for a long time.

"How would someone like you be able to detect it?"