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The title pretty much says it all. I cannot find it in the glossary. And being a native German speaker does not help either¹.
The old woman studied Paul in one gestalten flicker: face oval like Jessica's, but strong bones . . . hair
From Dune, Book 1, chapter 1
¹If it helps anybody, the German noun Gestalten means forms, shapes, figures, while the verb gestalten means to shape, to create.
This word is used again (and explained more extensively) in an excerpt from the fictional 'Mentat Handbook' seen in the sequel to "Dune", "The Children of Dune"
"You will learn the integrated communication methods as you complete the next step in your mental education. This is a gestalten function which will overlay data paths in your awareness, resolving complexities and masses of input from the mentat index-catalogue techniques which you already have mastered. Your initial problem will be the breaking tensions arising from the divergent assembly of mentat overlay integration, you can be immersed in the Babel Problem, which is the label we give to the omnipresent dangers of achieving wrong combinations from accurate information."
Essentially it is referring to the mentat ability for the subconscious and the conscious to simultaneously receive and process information, and to sort and sift that information by likelihood.
I think 'gestalten' here means the meaning of the original Gestalt psychology: looking at the whole. So in my interpretation it means that the old woman [Gaius Helen Mohiam] recorded all the details of Paul with one look.
