Dual Cognitive Systems

I just read a hilarious novel: As She Climbed Across the Table, by Jonathan Lethem. I was laughing out loud on the plane while reading it. Like a Woody Allen film, all the irony and humor seem to contain useful pearls of wisdom, and it cheered me up immensely. There is plenty of unrequited love to go around in the plot, along with a surprising, easy romance offered up in contrast.

At one point a new girl (studying psychology) is trying to start something with the book's protagonist but he needs to get over his "limerent object". He has trouble letting go of his ex and is awkward and resistant towards the new girl, but she is understanding and says

Relax. There's nothing wrong with a slow, awkward beginning. The text for the whole relationship, the sustaining mythos, is built in the first few encounters. The whirl of emotions, the push and pull. So the more of this kind of material we generate, the better.

The same psychologist girl in the novel brings up a fascinating concept that relates to the book's plots involving bad, unbalanced relationships:

In the larger sense my reasearch is into the delusory or subjective worlds that exist in the space between the two halves of any dual cognitive system. It applies to any coupling, from obsessive twins all the way down to a chance momentary encounter in public, between two strangers.