Dune and the Future Power of Women and Mothers

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

Women play a powerful role in Dune. Most obviously, it is through the group called the Bene Gesserit. Secretly connecting and influencing the 3 male-dominated world political powers, they are a longstanding religious or cultish order that has been developing a breeding program to eventually produce a Messiah-like leader.

Over time, they get called witches because they have learned various psychological techniques. One of them is voice control that provides Kabbalistic power of the word to bend men to their will when in trouble. For their own fear, they have overcome our inborn fight or flight response and learned how to carefully process and use the fear. Our upcoming Halloween would give them no trouble, whatsoever.

However, one becomes a renegade. She marries the leader of one of the powers out of love for him, and in shades of an Oedipal process, deliberately first produces a male child instead of the desired female. The father is killed when betrayed by a physician, and the heroic journey begins as she and her son flee to the Indigenous Fremen.

Of course, though the power of women in the United States has increased some in business and politics, there has yet to be a female President elected and control over pregnancy is threatened anew. However, as we discussed in the weekday video yesterday, some increased desire to have less children is emerging. Is that the beginning of what happens in Dune? If so, maybe it is instead whoever controls conception and child rearing controls the future world, and not the psychedelic spice that is fought for in the first part of Dune.

The breaking news is that the second part of the story has been approved for production and releases in October 2023.