Lisa Simpson...

 Lisa is losing it...

Lisa has been socialized to believe that intelligence is the human attribute of absolute importance to have. As a result, being smart is how she sees her deepest self. Her intelligence is the only standard, rule, et goal of her existence.

One day Lisa could not solve a puzzle while others around her whom she considered less smart were able to easily solve it. The following day she could not remember the code of her school locker nor could she play saxophone anymore. 

Bewildered, she shared her feelings about her perceived cognitive decline with her grandpa who cynically recounted her that, that was only normal because all the Simpson family members were born smart and lost their intelligence at some point.

Lisa fell into despair at the prospect of losing her intelligence which, again, meant her whole sense of self and her standard, rule, and goal of her existence. While the loss was attributed to family genetics, thus, to a locus out of her control, Lisa still experienced shame. She didn’t not seem to have feelings of guilt probabaly due to her accepting the external, uncontrollable, and imminent cause of her intelligence loss, i.e., the abnormal genes running in the family.

However, she felt deep shame at the prospect of becoming unintelligent although she knew that was through no fault of hers. While the normal Lisa would have been embarrassed at her brother and father’ idiotic games (breaking things, watching cruel shows), she would now join them in their activities, deeply delving into inertia and apathy. 

Her shame as a global self-conscious emotion overrode the repeated embarrassment that all the specific events she experienced in her new status of "idiocy", events that she would usually have caused her to feel.

Noticing her state and hearing what her grandfather had told her, Homer, Lisa’s father, wanting to help, invited all the members of the family over to show that that they were not all unintelligent. One by one, all the men in the family talked of their indeed silly careers, if any. Lisa fell even deeper into her hopelessness. 

    But this time, it was from Marge, her mother, that help came. Marge asked the one-million-dollar question: “What about the women in the family?”. When the women were asked about their careers, Lisa realized they were all accomplished professionals. Hence, the saving conclusion was that the Simpson women were not affected by the family defective gene. 

    Lisa went back to the puzzle she couldn’t solve a while before… but she did this time. She also recovered her skills to play saxophone. Her positive relationship with the self, and her standard, rule, goal of being smart were restored and the episode ended happily.