In the assumption that the conditional amplitude collapses to the corresponding ion when the distance of the reference electron from the bulk of the system is large enough, i.e. Φ(σ, 2, . . . , N ; r) → Ψ N -1 (2, . . . , N ) for |r| → ∞, shifting ṽN-1 by the energy of the corresponding ion, E N -1 , gauges it to vanish asymptotically. However, note that the validity of such an assumption is observed to break down in the ground state case in the presence of nodal planes , which in turn are expected to occur more frequently for higher energy states. Definitions ( ) -( ) of v kin , v cond , v N -1 correspond to the usual definitions of these potentials when the conditional amplitude is purely real, Φ(σ, 2, . . . , N ; r) = R(σ, 2, . . . , N ; r), and are extended in this paper to the complex case for θ(1, . . . , N ) = 0, 2π, . . ..