[en] Brownian motion, random walk, dissipative forces, and coherent states of the harmonic oscillator are concepts that have been discussed in various combinations in countless papers since the beginning of this century. This paper attempts to link these ideas together in relatively elementary format. The Hamiltonian for a forced linear harmonic oscillator which is subject to a generalized dipole interaction with arbitrary time dependence is considered. The relevance of dissipative forces for kinetics of heavy-ion reactions is pointed out