  We review some aspects of the quantization of the damped harmonic oscillator.
We derive the exact action for a damped mechanical system in the frame of the
path integral formulation of the quantum Brownian motion problem developed by
Schwinger and by Feynman and Vernon. The doubling of the phase-space degrees of
freedom for dissipative systems and thermal field theories is discussed and the
doubled variables are related to quantum noise effects. The 't Hooft proposal,
according to which the loss of information due to dissipation in a classical
deterministic system manifests itself in the quantum features of the system, is
analyzed and the quantum spectrum of the harmonic oscillator is shown to be
originated from the dissipative character of the original classical
deterministic system.
