i believe i said something about alters being elaborated ego states when i was talking about the continuum of dissociation.

The *elaborated* is what is doing most of the work, however...

I think that someone talked about how *everybody* has ego states. I don't (and the majority of theorists don't) use the term 'ego state' to refer to something that everybody has, however. Everybody has something... And ego states are elaborations on that (where once again *elaboration* is doing a lot of the work here).

So there is kind of something approximating normality (probably 'idealised functioning').

Some people benefit from doing important work on their 'inner children' and their traumatic early experiences and the like...

Sometimes those 'inner children' and traumatic early experiences kind of solidify a little by virtue of there being a more extreme than usual dissociative barrier between the different states. While state dependent memory is a feature of everybodies psychology when there is amnesia the state dependent memory is taken to an extreme. The solidification into fragments is about where I'd but the 'ego state' notion.

Then we can get even more elaboration on the different states (working up the continuum now). The states kind of build up knowledge and memories and abilities and the like in virtue of their becoming more complex and spending more time in control. Alters.

There is a continuum. Its not always clear where someone lies on the continuum. Someone can have personality fragments while having alters as well or whatever.

The very notion 'ego state' is very theory-laden. It seems to suggest a splitting of the ego and as such would give rise to the more 'rational' personalities. Some theorists believe that the majority of identities are more appropriately regarded as 'id states' as they are EP's (emotional personality's) rather than ANP's (apparently normal personalities).