Alchemy: An Introduction to the Symbolism and the Psychology (Studies in Jungian Psychology)

Customer Reviews:

"The double face of alchemy-laboratory and library-corresponds to the two-fold nature of the individuation process:.......2006-05-22

. . . the active nature of participation in outer reality and relationships, together with the process of inner reflection."

The above quote from page 83 of von Franz' book illustrates the reason that Jung and von Franz were interested in alchemy: as a symbolic portrayal of psychic processes, particularly individuation. Individuation is the goal of all psychic processes which, in a nutshell, is balance--between conscious and unconscious processes achieved in part by developing a healthy connection with the collective unconscious.

This book displays the masterly scholarship of M.L. von Franz, who wrote this book as an introduction to the more arcane and less clearly written books by Jung on the topic. The book is taken from transcriptions of a series of lectures on alchemy.

Von Franz begins with discussing some basic Jungian, mythological and alchemical concepts. She then proceeds to discuss Greek alchemy for several chapters starting with one of the oldest alchemical writings "The Prophetess Isis to her son." Isis' son is of course, Horus. In this passage, an angel comes to Isis and wants to have sex with her. She negotiates a bargain where the angel will tell her the secret of alchemy. The bargain stipulates that she cannot share her secret with anyone except her son. Hence the secret of alchemy--the philosphers stone--is known as "the secret of the widow" (Isis was the widow of Osiris).

In other chapters von Franz discusses Arabic and European alchemy, utilizing other source texts. Von Franz recounts Jung's search for a text called "Aurora Consurgens" conducted with her assistance. Von Franz subsequently translated and published this text which some sources attribrute to Thomas Aquinas.

This is an excellent introduction to Jungian alchemical concepts. The text is accompanied by black and white illustrations of alchemical symbols.

(Remember that this is a transcript of lectures so the writing is not as good as some of von Franz' other works. In particular I found some of the transcribed questions and comments from the peanut gallery to be annoying.)

correction.......2003-07-12

just a note: the review above refers to Anatomy of the Psyche by Edinger. Anatomy of the Soul is a misprint.

A meeting with a remarkable mind.......2002-01-27

I first discovered Marie-Louise Von Franz in her collaboration with Emma Jung in their extraordinary book "The Grail Legend", which is by far the most intellectually coherent book I have ever encountered regarding that material, in which they place those strange and surreal stories in the framework of a Jungian perspective on the history of consciousness. In these lectures on alchemical symbolism, Von Franz applies many of the same Jungian techniques to explore some important alchemical texts.

I especially appreciated her decision to explore three texts in depth, rather than simply presenting a survey of alchemical literature, since there are numerous other books that do that. The fact that this is a transcript of a lecture series actually adds a wonderful dramatic tension to the book, since it includes some encounters with the attendees that demonstrate both her tremendous humanity and her impressive understanding of the subject and its relevance to modern psychology.

One of the most provocative concepts presented is the danger of an individual experiencing an overload of revelation from the unconscious, with its accompanying challenge of integrating more insight than a mere mortal can manage. Von Franz explores this concept especially well in the discussion of the text by Thomas Aquinas, where we learn about his very stressful final years in a very moving lecture that continues to provide me with much to ponder.

Great introductions to a fascinating subject.......2001-12-11

If I had my time over again I would read these three books on alchemy in the following order: All of them are excellent in their own sphere to introduce a complex process.

(1) The Forge and the Crucible - Eliade
This is an excellent prehistory of alchemy showing the patterns of thought out of which Alchemy most probably arose. An easy read.

(2) Anatomy of the Soul - Edinger
Set out according to seven processes involved in alchemy Calcinatio, Solutio, Coagulatio, Sublimatio, Mortificatio, Separatio, Coniunctio, this is an accessible book that puts each process in reasonably neat boxes, (though the considerable overlap and intermingling is acknowledged). The approach is somewhat mechanical.

(3) Alchemy, an Introduction... - Von Franz.
More 'organic' than Edinger, Von Franz has a very warm and human touch. She deals with the origins of alchemy in Egypt and Greece and delves into the 'Aurora Consurgens', attributed to Aquinas. She includes relevent and interesting case material. Being a transcription of lectures, it is a little haphazard, though none the less informative for that.

A digestable introduction to a bewildering subject.......1999-04-20

This book comprises a series of lectures on Greek, Arabic and European alchemy. Since it is not written material every word is not weighed, which is a problem within the field of Jungian psychology. It's, however, quite interesting. One major surprise is that St. Thomas Aquinas is, with great likelihood, the author of the alchemical work 'Aurora Consurgens.'

Book Description

This Second Edition incorporates the latest developments in the practical application of LC. Covers the basic of LC, the six LC methods and their applications, and various specialized areas. Provides material for in-depth comprehension of how HPLC is performed, what the necessary materials are, and possible applications. Offers thorough treatment of such areas as quantitative and qualitative analysis by HPLC, preparative scale separations, gradient elution and column-switching, sample pretreatment and reaction detectors, automated systems for high-volume testing and/or samples requiring pretreatment, troubleshooting and sample artifacts, and selection and development of LC method for a particular applications.

Customer Reviews:

The Bible for the Chromatographer.......2003-04-01

Introduction to Modern Liquid Chromatography - This book is a must for anyone practicing liquid chromatography. It is a great resource for both the novice and experienced chemist. Highly recommended.

Dionex.......1999-02-10

I ma interesing for the new HPLC methods as Dionex

Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics

Average customer rating:

Pretty good service
Ever wonder why energy flows from a hot body to a cooler one?
Good reference book
Caltech Graduate Student
Only modern stat mech book

Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics
David Chandler
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195042778

Book Description

Leading physical chemist David Chandler takes a new approach to statistical mechanics to provide the only introductory-level work on the modern topics of renormalization group theory, Monte Carlo simulations, time correlation functions, and liquid structure. The author provides compact summaries of the fundamentals of this branch of physics and discussions of many of its traditional elementary applications, interspersed with over 150 exercises and microcomputer programs.

Customer Reviews:

Pretty good service.......2007-02-17

The book cover is in worse condition than I expected, but the contents are all there, and it came within a week of ordering.

Ever wonder why energy flows from a hot body to a cooler one?.......2006-02-04

I used this book while taking the course for which this book was designed, Prof. Chandler's stat mech course for first year graduate students.

I agree with the reviewer who wrote that this book avoids a lot of filler that can distort the main thrust of the material at hand.

I disagree with the reviewer who wrote that this is not the book for a beginner. I used this book having studied undergrad p-chem but essentially no stat mech. Being a concise text, one must read carefully to extract the point of each paragraph. I sometimes found myself re-reading certain sections a few times in order to understand them. The abundant prose should be evidence that the author is trying to provide a physical picture to improve the scientific intuition of the reader.

This doesn't mean the book isn't for a beginner. It just means what you should already know: you will not learn stat mech by skimming any text just once with a pint of beer in your hand.

I constantly return to this book for review of thermo and stat mech concepts. For my grad qualifying exams I mostly used McQuarrie for general p-chem overview, but switched right back to IMSM for thermo and stat mech review.

If you're looking for a reference book with every possible stat mech problem worked out to help with your problem sets, this is not it. If you want to understand stat mech this book is the first step.

Good reference book.......2001-05-23

A clear, concise explanation of statistical mechanics. Some people may complain about the "concise" part--in many cases, mathematical exercises are left as exercises to the student. However, this practice allows the reader to really understand the material by doing, not just reading. I learned stat mech for the first time from this book, and only examined other texts (mcquarrie or hill) afterwards.

Caltech Graduate Student.......2000-03-02

This was a great book. It covered the important material and left out all of the extra garbage that most books carry on for pages about. The presentation was done using clear mathematics and modern, easily followed notation. The book is short making it practical to actually read the entire book if you are extremely busy. We used the book in conjunction with Hill. I don't recommend Hill because it is hard to follow.

Only modern stat mech book.......1998-06-22

The best part of this book is that it is modern. You have chapters on Monte Carlo simulations, the Ising model, and more. You don't get long chapters on the partition function of an ideal gas, for example. The bad part about this book is that it is not immediately transparent if you're reading stat mech for the first time. I like it more the more I know about stat mech, but it's not a good beginner's book, and I think it's better to have another book with it - maybe Hill or McQuarrie - since it's not really that long either. Still, recommended (get the soln. manual too) with these caveats.

Modern Quantum Chemistry: Introduction to Advanced Electronic Structure Theory

Average customer rating:

A good book
The Best Book about Hartree-Fock Theory
Excellent for quantum chemistry
A pleasure to read
Good delivering!

Modern Quantum Chemistry: Introduction to Advanced Electronic Structure Theory
Attila Szabo , and Neil S. Ostlund
Manufacturer: Dover Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0486691861

Book Description

Graduate-level text explains modern in-depth approaches to the calculation of the electronic structure and properties of molecules. Hartree-Fock approximation, electron pair approximation, much more. Largely self-contained, only prerequisite is solid course in physical chemistry. Over 150 exercises. 1989 edition.

Customer Reviews:

A good book.......2007-06-09

This book is wonderful for people (like me) who had no clear idea about equations behind Hartree Fock or CCSD methods. The book is well detailed and illustrated by simple (rather simple) examples. I did the major part of exercices and I did not find a lot of mistakes: some differencies in numerical calculations sometimes. However, the problem is that some exercises are long enough to solve and this tends to stop the reader during his reading. A second point is that the Hartree Fock method is fully explained but other methods and in particular those developped in the last chapters are less detailed. Obviously this is an introduction to quantum chemistry but ... Anyway I think this book deserves its 4 stars and even more (4.5 stars). Although this book is a little old now (10 year old) it remains one of the best introduction to modern quantum chemistry and provides the reader with a general picture of problems that arise in this chemical physics field of research. This book also provides the reader with a number of references to enable further readings which is noticeable.

The Best Book about Hartree-Fock Theory.......2007-06-08

This is so far the best book written about Hartree-Fock Theory. It provides all the mathematical background of vectors, matrices and operators, necessary for the development of the theory. Then it presents the theory in a very satifactory (detailed) way. If you want to learn the Hartree-Fock theory, to the level that allows you to understand what the standard computational quantum chemical packages do, then you shoud read this book.

Excellent for quantum chemistry.......2007-05-20

This book was an excellent find for quantum chemistry. It briefly mentions the schroedinger equation and the math required for it and the rest of the book is dedicated to developing techniques and formalism in many electron systems. Purely physical and application oriented work. As mentioned in the preface, exercises are essential, the book without them appears to be a smooth reader, but it quiet isn't and there are high chances that you'll lose track if you don't solve side by side (happened with me!) So in short, if you are looking for deep philosophical insights and things like that, you might get disappointed. But excellent for application based quantum chemists.

Regards
Purushottam

A pleasure to read.......2007-03-10

An excellent introduction to the subject. For those a bit rusty on the math, the review of linear algebra and matrix algebra is quick but touches all main points, showing the authors' good grasp of the subject. One can compare this book to "Computational Chemistry" by Errol Lewars, which provides an overview of the various methods: Molecular Mechanics, Ab Initio, Semiempirical, and density functional theory. "Modern Quantum Chemistry" chooses to concentrate on Ab Initio methods, particularly Hartree-Fock, which it treats in detail and supplements with more sophisticated methods. The formalism is somewhat more in-depth than in Lewar's book.

One can obtain an overview of quantum chemistry by first reading Lewar's "Computational Chemistry" and then probe the subject in more detail with "Modern Quantum Chemistry".

Good delivering!.......2007-01-05

the item was in very good condition, the shipping was very fast and the wrapping was very good!

Solutions Manual for "Modern Organic Synthesis: An Introduction"

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Solutions Manual for "Modern Organic Synthesis: An Introduction"
Michael H. Nantz , Hasan Palandoken , and George S. Zweifel
Manufacturer: W. H. Freeman
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0716774941

A Complete Introduction to Modern NMR Spectroscopy

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Reference that is worth it's weight in Gold

A Complete Introduction to Modern NMR Spectroscopy
Roger S. Macomber
Manufacturer: Wiley-Interscience
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0471157368

Book Description

Clear, accessible coverage of modern NMR spectroscopy-for students and professionals in many fields of science

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has made quantum leaps in the last decade, becoming a staple tool in such divergent fields as chemistry, physics, materials science, biology, and medicine. That is why it is essential that scientists working in these areas be fully conversant with current NMR theory and practice.

This down-to-basics text offers a comprehensive, up-to-date treatment of the fundamentals of NMR spectroscopy. Using a straightforward approach that develops all concepts from a rudimentary level without using heavy mathematics, it gives readers the knowledge they need to solve any molecular structure problem from a complete set of NMR data. Topics are illustrated throughout with hundreds of figures and actual spectra. Chapter-end summaries and review problems with answers are included to help reinforce and test understanding of key material.

From NMR studies of biologically important molecules to magnetic resonance imaging, this book serves as an excellent all-around primer on NMR spectroscopic analysis.

Customer Reviews:

Reference that is worth it's weight in Gold.......2004-02-27

A valuable refernce for any organic chemist in the early years of a career in industry or as a graduate student. Aviods being bogged down in quantum theory and explains NMR in a clear concise manner. I have read the first 1/3 and couldn't be more pleased. I would also recommend Andrew Derome as well.

The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals; An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry. (George Fisher Baker Non-Resident Lec)

Average customer rating:

One of the Masterpiece
An all time classic

The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals; An Introduction to Modern Structural Chemistry. (George Fisher Baker Non-Resident Lec)
Linus Pauling
Manufacturer: Cornell University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0801403332

Customer Reviews:

One of the Masterpiece.......2003-08-24

This book is one of the Masterpiece in Chemistry.
You simply can not rate this book in stars values. It is one of the EPIC in Chemistry.
I should say it is a bible or Bhagavad-Gita for chemists,

An all time classic.......2001-05-13

"It is better to foresee, even without certainty, than not to foresee at all", writes Linus Pauling in the preface of this book, which has become a bible for chemists.When I first read this book, I thought that it was unnecessarily detailed.But then, as I patiently went through the chapters, I realised that Pauling has truly "foreseen with certainty" in his career and discoveries, which is slowly but surely revealed in this book.I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in how a few simple scientific ideas lead to the explanation of literally hundreds of phenomena.In this book, the two times Nobel Prize winner has beautifully demonstrated how his classic 'Valence Bond Theory' can be applied to explain the bewildering array of atoms, molecules and crystals around us.In each chapter, the author introduces certain classic principles like resonance, electronegativity,partial ionic character of bonds, partial double bond character, and hybridization.These concepts are today the cornerstone of the description of thousands of simple molecules. It should be noted that the valence bond approach has its drawbacks, which Pauling does not discuss.It is also true that the Molecular Orbital Theory has replaced his theory in making quantitative calculations.However, Pauling's masterly style of writing and the insights which almost each and every page of this book give the reader, are unparalleled.Even though the book would perhaps not prove useful as a modern chemistry book, I think it should be read by each and every chemist and chemistry student as the ultimate example of simplicity,variety and beauty.It is one of the finest examples of how one extraordinary scientist tries to explain diverse chemical phenomena with a few simple ideas.

Solutions Manual for Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics

Average customer rating:

There are more answers online!!
One of the best
soso

Solutions Manual for Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics
David Chandler , and David Wu
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0195058895

Book Description

Professor Chandler and a colleague, David Wu, have prepared a solutions manual to Introduction to Modern Statistical Mechanics (Oxford 1987), to be used as an ancillary to the text. The instructive numerical work in the manual is an important supplement, because the material can only be learned by tackling the exercises. Methods of solution are provided for a majority of the problems.

Customer Reviews:

There are more answers online!!.......2006-09-14

This manual provides solutions to select problems only. I recommend the internet over buying this manual; you'll find more solutions there. Even Chandler recommends using other sources at the beginning of the text book.

One of the best.......2002-11-16

This book is really one of the better book on statistical physics. It is short and concise but it is impressive the amount of physics discussed in this book!
And the presentation is really modern.

soso.......1998-06-22

Don't get your hopes up too much. Not all of the problems are solved. The problems that are solved are solved OK but not always in the best way. Still, I'd buy this book all over again, since "Intro to stat mech" by Chandler is pretty cheap to begin with. Just think of it as paying for 1 book.

NMR and Chemistry: An introduction to modern NMR spectroscopy, Fourth Edition

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NMR and Chemistry: An introduction to modern NMR spectroscopy, Fourth Edition
J.W. Akitt , and B. E. Mann
Manufacturer: CRC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0748743448

Book Description

Keeping mathematics to a minimum, this book introduces nuclear properties, nuclear screening, chemical shift, spin-spin coupling, and relaxation. It is one of the few books that provides the student with the physical background to NMR spectroscopy from the point of view of the whole of the periodic table rather than concentrating on the narrow applications of 1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy. Aids to structure determination, such as decoupling, the nuclear Overhauser effect, INEPT, DEPT, and special editing, and two dimensional NMR spectroscopy are discussed in detail with examples, including the complete assignment of the 1H and 13C NMR spectra of D-amygdain. The authors examine the requirements of a modern spectrometer and the effects of pulses and discuss the effects of dynamic processes as a function of temperature or pressure on NMR spectra. The book concludes with chapters on some of the applications of NMR spectroscopy to medical and non-medical imaging techniques and solid state chemistry of both I = F1/2 and I > F1/2 nuclei. Examples and problems, mainly from the recent inorganic/organometallic chemistry literature support the text throughout. Brief answers to all the problems are provided in the text with full answers at the end of the book.

Introduction to Modern Vibrational Spectroscopy

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Introduction to Modern Vibrational Spectroscopy
Max Diem
Manufacturer: Wiley-Interscience
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Practical and up-to-date, it incorporates some theoretical background material necessary to understand vibrational spectroscopy principles in addition to computational methods, instrumental aspects, novel developments and a number of detailed examples for vibrational spectra interpretations. Features a chapter on biological applications of vibrational spectroscopy and one devoted to a new branch of vibrational spectroscopy carried out with circularly polarized light.

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