Cyclops' Psychological Problems in X-Men


Cyclops for me is a guy with issues.  At this point, I want to analyze some of Cyclops' psychological problems and what could have caused them.

Going back to his childhood, he and his brother Alex were separated and he was maintained in the orphanage.  Mr. Sinister had secretly manipulated his life, believing he possessed one half of the DNA needed to sire the ultimate mutant.  Worse, the crash hit him so bad, he got a coma and it also caused him to be unable to control his optic blasts.  Getting huge hit on your head can cause serious sanity problems. Believe me, I've had a head accident before and my personality just got worse.

I would probably look at the events between him and Jean Grey.  That love story is very troublesome considering Jean Grey becoming Phoenix then she becomes Dark Phoenix, which wrecks havoc.  Jean Grey sacrificed herself and was thought dead, Cyclops was left traumatized by that event.  So he did date a human girl named Lee Forrester for awhile but he could not forget Jean.  Poor Cyclops just refused to move on.


What was worse was when Mr. Sinister sent his "daughter" Madelyne Pryor who was a clone of Jean Grey created some time ago to work with the Summers clan.  This was his plan to get Cyclops to produce the desired child out of his DNA and Madelyne's DNA (since she carried Jean's DNA).  In the process, he tried to use Madelyne Pryor as a substitute for Jean Grey to the point he MARRIED her, had a son by her who she named as Nathan (after Mr. Sinister) much to Cyclops' dismay.  Later when he discovered that Jean Grey was alive, he somewhat also helped trigger the events of Inferno when Madelyne Pryor agreed to serve S'ym, even sacrifice their son Nathan to hurt him and Mr. Sinister in the process.  Jean Grey defeated Madelyne Pryor but she turned him down, which was but proper considering Cyclops was acting rashly.


One of the worst tragedies to hit Cyclops was losing his son Nathan Christopher Charles into the future. Apocalypse feared the fact that the son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor would grow powerful enough to overthrow the former.  It would really be traumatizing to lose your son into the future and then at the risk of never seeing him again.  Remember he had no freaking choice if he wanted to save him.  Years later, Nathan came back older than his parents as Cable.  I wonder if the shock of his son now being physically older than him ever brought a shock?


Perhaps the biggest contributor to Cyclops' psychological problems were the House of M incident and before that, his merger with Apocalypse.  Apocalypse wrote the story of "The Twelve" in his effort to make sure THAT he becomes godlike.  Cyclops was part of that whole scheme because he needed a family unit when he had Cable and Jean Grey included.  Others that were included were Professor X, Bishop, Mikhail Magneto, Polaris, Storm, Iceman, Sunfire and Living Monolith for his grand scheme.  When the machine ran out of control thanks to Magneto's weakened state, Apocalypse sought to merge with Nate Grey (this also puts a plot hole why his future self couldn't fully merge with Stryfe).  The result was that Cyclops sacrificed himself, but the process merged them both.  Even if later, Cable and Jean Grey were able to free him, he didn't escape unscathed as he really became a dickhead.  He became an even bigger dickhead after the House of M incident, making him worse of a villain than Magneto's earlier days.

Comments