Frank Herbert was interested in the work of Thomas Szasz and the anti-psychiatry movement. Often, Herbert poses the question, “What is sane?”, and while there are clearly insane behaviors and psychopathies as evinced by characters (Piter De Vries for instance), it is often suggested that “normal” and “abnormal” are relative terms which humans are sometimes ill-equipped to apply to one another, especially on the basis of statistical regularity.

–Wikipe...