did they switch personality?????? wait! you're on to some thing! what if we could switch yukkuris bodies like if a good yukkuri was dying and a deibu or bawrisa was there, we could switch thier bodies so the good yukkuri stays alive and deibu dies
I think it's more like their personalities were switched, not memories. Alice still refers to things as "city sect" or not, so alice is still alice with patchouli's mannerisms and psychological frailties, not the patchouli mind in the alice's body.
Body switching yukkuri stories have been done before, but behavior transference is something new, and is actually more interesting, as these stories would deal more on how the modified yukkuri deals with the new changes. In this case, raper patchouli didn't survive the excitement of the experience. (Probably the equivalent of overdosing a monk on viagra or something to that effect...)
And cheer up, science nitori. Think of it not as a failed experiment, but another step in the grand experiment you're still working on.