A native New Yorker, David V. Forrest, M.D., studied criticism at Princeton University and received his medical, psychiatric, and psychoanalytic training at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he is now clinical professor of psychiatry. He was chief of the largest U.S. Army psychiatric clinic in Vietnam at the peak of American involvement there and received the Bronze Star. He is a past president of the American College of Psychoanalysts and the New York Clinical Society, and is a fellow of the Explorers Club.
In addition to writing hundreds of scholarly articles on psychiatry, neuropsychiatry, applied psychoanalysis, literary analysis, anthropology, and artificial mind, he has coauthored an educational videotape series, was a consultant to the television show Star Trek, and has created a slang dictionary for foreign doctors. He lives in New York City with his wife, Lynne Stetson. They have two grown children. .