“To suggest that someone requires a hug is to say something potentially, but only potentially, demeaning. It’s suggesting that they are, at least for the moment, rather like a child. They have the same kinds of emotional needs that we come to think of as essentially childlike. To need a hug is to admit that one is incapable of coping on one’s own, that one requires protection, guidance, the help of someone wiser and more capable, that one needs to have one’s troubles and anxieties reinterpreted by a more mature mind. It is to say, in shorthand, ‘I am at the moment like a child and I need someone else to be, for a while, like a parent.’ Yet even if we don’t usually like to admit it, there are in fact many times when we should be able to revert to a childlike position. There are moments of adult life when one seems petulant, scared, shy and sure that everything suddenly feels totally unfair. One’s ability to look after oneself is terribly depleted. At such times, to get ourselves back together, we need someone else to take the burden from us. We require the equivalent of what the parent does for the child. We are in need of someone to pat us on the head, to put us to bed early, tuck us in and hold us tight.”