In accounting for missing time, one wonders if there is a disassociative basis for the absence or lack of accountability for living time. In a smaller scale this can be demonstrated in a neural pathway limitation -- making little/no strong pathways to the event, all of life's events are stored, but to varying degrees of retrivability. A chemical change can bring about an even stranger existence in that actions by be controlled by a person, but not registered as related to that person. In other words: a person can walk across the room, but in some level on consciousness never associate that with his/her own actions, in that s/he popped from location to location. Moreover, the frontal lobes and parietal regions try hard to reason out what happened, so the person might believe that s/he was carried to the other location or for lack of any real understanding of the change of locations, may dismiss it entirely; striking it from retrievable memory.
The acting part of the mind responsible for moving the person may make no strong pathways (memory) of the event as it was out of the ordinary.
Now: take an event where the mind would naturally protect itself from harm -- intense/severe psychological harm in the context that one or more of the actions of a person fit this category. For example:
John Doe is acting in a rational way, doing the commonplace, while on a separate level he is calculating other actions or doing other actions (different than phantom limb). John's other actions are rooted in satisfying unmet wants/needs that won't be met by the other level of thinking. Similar to not using profanity in certain places because it behooves you to change or maintain a different vernacular. Level two's actions become so severe that John must block out what has happened. Now, shutting down level two leaves level one to sift through the mess and rationalize and reason what is there. This may be then related to John and thererefore be too severe to reason and level one shuts down as well. This action may lead to a level three disassociated incompletely or completely from the other levels. Level two -- as it were, may never again be retrievable in non-clinical attempts. The dissociation is complete then, in that John has acted, but may not relate those actions to himself directly or at all.
The third level then carries on where the other two levels have thereafter slept. The accountability of the actions is important in that may typical actions may be directly associated with the severe act. If the act involves driving; like running over a person, John may have difficulty driving thereafter, as part of the shutting down involves driving. No level of re-training may work. Other, more mundane tasks may also be affected such as talking, eating, walking.
In the retrieving and re-integration of information waking the levels of thinking is the greatest difficulty, in that generally the mind casts up this abrasions, never again checking their healing -- CT scans may even show low levels of use despite its need to be accessed.
Chemical prompts and goading lead to some better, or at least prompt results. Medically speaking, resurging of memories has exhibitions of violence, much like kicking of shins, reactionary on a non-cognitive level. This rejoining is a long process but in continual therapy the reactions are less severe each time until there is a merging of previously disassociated regions of memory.
Multiple personality, different than the aforementioned disassociation, is closer to hemispherectory in that the aflicted may keep all regions of the brain intact -- capable of wrting, reading, speaking all equivilent to each other, with the exception of a drawback -- generally the frontal lobes are rationed out to serve for personality storage. In this case, Mr. Happy may have a larger apartment than Mr. Sad, on the same floor. While Mr. Sad may have happy moments, it is Mr. Happy who has the bulk of this personality -- emtional drive. Fight-or-flight actions may be attributed to all personalies as it is based on other areas of the brain.
Therapy for this situation must be matched with chemistry and clinical talking therapy. Generally, the longer the separation of the personalities, the more difficult the separation, in that the neural pathways are stronger separated than at junctions. In this, the emtional processing and storage, other brain regions may become less-developed while the frontal lobes are more rigidly used -- saving the person from fusion or psychological death from the merging of the personalities.
