Jean Grey is the younger daughter of Professor John Grey of the History Department of Bard College in Annandale-on Hudson, New York, and his wife Elaine. When Jean was ten years old, she was playing with her best friend Annie Richardson when Annie was hit by an automobile The emotion that Jean felt as she held her dying friend awakened her own latent telepathic powers, and she thus experienced Annie's own emotions as she died. This traumatic occurrence left Jean in a withdrawn and deeply depressed state. Moreover, Jean discovered that she could not control her newly awakened telepathic abilities, and had to isolate herself from other people to keep hold of her sanity.
Finally, when Jean was eleven, a psychiatrist recommended to her parents that they consult a colleague of his, Professor Charles Xavier, who was secretly a mutant with telepathic abilities . Xavier explained to Jean, but not to her parents, that she was a mutant, and he treated her for several years. Xavier used young Jean to calibrate his Cerebro machine and during one particular session an aspect of young Jean's mind reached out in the form of the Phoenix to touch Scott's mind in the orphanage as he slept. [10] During this time he erected psychic shields in Jean's mind so that she would not be able to use her telepathic abilities until she had achieved the maturity necessary for dealing with them. Simultaneously, he taught her how to levitate and manipulate objects through psionic force when she developed telekinesis at the age of 13.
Log in to comment