The Behaviorists or Learning Theorists would say that Sam was just a case of reinforcement gone awry. When Sam was little and his father gave him math problems to do Dad did not give Sam any positive reinforcement when he did well. Instead he made the tasks impossibly difficult. Sam eventually came to associate mathematics with pain. This is evidenced in the statement that he hated his father. The situation had just become intolerable. Sam's hedge trimming avoidance response was another form of associative learning. When he found out that he could get out of doing math by trimming the hedge a previously absent association formed A previously unpleasant stimulus (hedge trimming) became associated with avoidance of pain (mathematics). All of his father's discouragement had induced a state of conditoneed hoplessness in Sam. He had come to believe that he was a failure in mathematics because of the extraordinary demands his father had placed on him. His performance in school (on much easier tasks) was a fufillment of his belief that he was incompetent in mathematics. In short, he had been conditioned to fail. His sucess with the blade was a simple case of classical conditioning. Whenever he performed well he was rewarded with a wonderful meal and the thanks of his friends and/or customers. When his father died Sam dropped the knife. His cooking became associated with multiple forms of pain: the grief of his father's death anfd his own hospitalization. He therefore came to loathe knives and other sharp objects and fear the pain that he had come to associate with them.