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Proust's and Stendhal's psychopathology has usually been considered narcissistic. Loss of self-esteem and sense of self follows loss of the idealized object. Yet Sands feels that this does not explain the apparent richness of the inner attachments, with the external semblance of narcissism. Counterpoising Kernberg's description of narcissism, in which relationships are shallow and glib, he suggests that Proust's twenty-year withdrawal from society into his literary work after the death of his mother (it was the same with Standhal) was the mark of profound devotion and richness. Sands likens the phenomenon to the mechanisms described in Freud's Mourning and Melancholia. In melancholia the withdrawal of libido from the loved person is followed by cathecting an identification within the ego. For both Proust and Stendhal unresolved grief and inadequate separation are followed by a retreat into nostalgic involvement which preserves the lost object and a sense of self. It is a regressed form of relating which is archaic and involves an idealized parent with a mixture of oedipal and narcissistic elements. Sands believes that certain narcissistic personalities are able to assume commitment and a sense of obligation.