Criticism #10: Those wacky Bene Gesserit!

The Bene Gesserit have breeding programs lasting thousands of years. They carefully cultivate talents and abilities and continue them down through generations. The Reverend Mothers have memories going back to the dawn of time, and can thus teach and learn any technique their ancestors either knew or even knew about. You know, except when they don't.

In Legends of Dune, the Sorceresses of Rossak have the ability to detonate their minds and fry the brains of nearby people. A useful ability for someone in an extreme situation. We later learn that the Sorceresses are the basis of the Bene Gesserit. And yet the Bene Gesserit never display this ability. It would have come in handy when they were being hunted by the Honored Matres!

In House Harkonnen, when the Baron and his entourage are on the surface of Wallach IX, all the Bene Gesserit there, from the lowliest acolyte to the highest Reverend Mothers, are able to seem invisible due to a mass hypnosis of the Baron and his soldiers. Invisibility! Another useful skill. I wonder why Jessica didn't teach it to the Fedaykin, since apparently children can engage in it? Or why, again, the Bene Gesserit didn't use to kick the crap out of the Honored Matres?

In Winds of Dune, we learn there are a group of Bene Gesserit called guilt casters, that can hypnotize people into a emotionally destroyed catatonic states. Again, this ability doesn't exist before this novel is written, and disappears from the Bene Gesserit arsenal the second the book ends.