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Focus on books :
Psychological insights to day-to-day life
By Prof. Sunanda Mahendra
Book Jeevithayata Manovidyawa Author Upali Samarasinghe
(a collection of eleven essays on aspects of psychology and its
application to life)
An author publication
48 pages.
At title given to a book may at times mislead a common reader. But
the writer may be doing so purposely to attract the attention of the
reader towards a specific topic: I too had this primary belief on
reading this collection of essays with one or two main essays drawing
attention on some aspects of psychology as applied to day to day life.
But the writer compiler of these essays Samarasinghe says at the
outset in his preface that he prefers to call his compilation a
compendium of essays on various subjects with a thread of psychological
aspects running like a subtext in all the essays contributed to various
newspapers and periodicals over the years from time to time.
 The writer compiler Samarasinghe selects a main essay titled as
‘Freud and the Mind’ and tries to lay down in simple terms what Freud,
the psychologist experimented with the human mind.
Samarasinghe, a trained scholar in psychology (according to data as
found in the blurb to the book), makes some resourceful factors
pertaining to the subject of the functioning of the human mind.
This opening essay looks like a stepping stone to the next essay
titled as ‘Evolution and the Mind’ where he further proceeds to lay down
how the humans grew up with his struggles with the surroundings, in
order to achieve what h/she is as claimed today in the ‘more modernistic
outlook’.
The reader gets a glimpse of Buddhist perspective attitudes as laid
down in the canons on reading the three essays that follow.
They are: 1. Is the world a reality? (31pp) 2. Buddhist psychological
attitudes on perception (39pp) 3. Food, health tips and good living
(55pp). The rest of the compilation consists of resourceful material
which are not directly connected with the main topics of psychology.
Though this is the general format of presentation, the writer culls
material from such sources as World Health Organisation and similar
units which help the humans for their betterment in the contemporary
living scene.
He attempts to show how the modern day family structure is infirm and
disturbed (65pp). Then he draws various examples from many a social unit
and clarify how humans show signs of decay via mental disorders (81pp).
The writer Samarasinghe is bent on showing the reality of the mental
disorders and the need to discuss them rather openly. One example of
human mental imbalance in humans according to him is the greed for more
and more wealth (97pp).
The last two essays are more bent on the illustration of spiritual
aspects aspired by the humans for better living (104, 144pp).
He clarifies with modern day examples the four aspects, physical,
mental social, and spiritual aspects needed for the aspiration of a
better living condition out of these four aspects he selects the last
item: spiritualism as one of the most significant achievements needed by
the humans.
The reader too enters into the realm of Orientals by way of religious
texts such as ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’ etc. I found the material
displayed at times though overlaps with each other is not due to
negligence on the part of the writer, but primarily due to the
compilation techniques when they first appeared in print as independent
pieces.
This collection of Sinhala essays may be useful for students and
teachers of social sciences at various layers of academia. I found that
despite the lack of coherence in topics, there is a certain interlink of
textual interpretation aimed to associate.
Several isolated subject areas like religion, literature, health
psychology into a single entity. Twenty eight books are referred to in
the compilation. The brief forward by two learned professors on the book
may tend to applaud the value of its contents, and present in the
academic sphere.
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