ABSTRACT
James Forrestal’s hospitalization had been a shock to many in the Princeton community, but the author thinks it fair to say that no one was prepared for his tragic death. The author's initial decision to do a book about Forrestal and the adherence to that decision were, like most choices in life, overdetermined. The intellectual determinants, so to speak, included Forrestal’s importance in the origins and conduct of the cold war, and in the reorganization of the military services that culminated in the establishment of the Department of Defense. A long-term consequence of the Forrestal research was a determination to seek psychoanalytic training, and in 1968, the author was accepted as a research candidate for training by the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, an affiliate institute of the American Psychoanalytic Association.
