This took me by suprise so I might have missed something, but before today's More 4 repeat of Deal or No Deal, there was a talking head style filler (sounded like it was an excerpt from an interview) which alleged to be on living with autism.
The actual content was about desensitising autistic kids to hugs so that they'd enjoy them, bizarely. Ended with the woman talking saying that no-one would ever desensitise her to liking the feeling of wool against her skin. She was talking with what sounded like a southern US accent, wearing a denim jacket. Got the overall impression of rural Texas but I could be very, very wrong there.
Was it about hug therapy? If so, a girl actually died during that, as its basically restraining a child, sometimes using the whole of an adults body, until they accept the hug.
Cruel and sick.
I don't recall the term hug therapy being used. I can't remember if the term flooding therapy was used, or if I thought the way it was being described was the same way that flooding therapy has been described in a thread on this site.
And I should stress that the snippit was clearly from a longer conversation presented as a talking head interview, and not long enough of one to get a context. It also wasn't made clear weather she herself is autistic or if she's the mother of someone who is, and the way they ended it with her saying that they wouldn't be able to desensitise her to like wearing wool almost might have been designed to make her sound hypocritical in her stance (since she did sound as if she supported the training of kids to like hugs)
So I can't judge the context of the person who was speaking or the intention of the program (well, filler) makers of how to present her. She wasn't obviously autistic within the filler, but that doesn't mean that she wasn't autistic.
There was some forced holding, I remember, but I don't know what psychospeak phrase was used to describe it.
It seems to go hand in hand with that awful despotic phrase "tough love" which somehow suggests over-cooked liver - hard, dry, and shrunken - the kind of thing that would break the plastic cutlery which has become a feature of institutional care.
Whereas most people when they say 'tough love' simple mean letting their child make their own mistakes. At least, that's how I've always interpritted the general expression.