A friend texted me about Frans de Waal's article in Sunday's Times, about guilt and dogs, emotions and humans:

'The Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz gave one of my favorite examples, about his dog, Bully, who broke the fundamental rule never to bite your superior.

Humans don’t need to teach this rule, and indeed Bully had never been punished for it. The dog bit his master’s hand when Dr. Lorenz tried to break up a dogfight. Even though Dr. Lorenz petted him right away, Bully suffered a complete nervous breakdown. For days, he was virtually paralyzed and ignored his food. He would lie on the rug breathing shallowly, occasionally interrupted by a deep sigh. He had violated a natural taboo, which among ancestral canines could have had the worst imaginable consequences, such as expulsion from the pack.

Among the primates, the most suggestive cases of remorse concern bonobos. These apes are as close to us as chimpanzees, but far more peaceful and gentle, which means that they almost never hurt one another. Whereas in most primates reconciliation after a fight is typically sought by the subordinate party, in bonobos it is the dominant animal that seeks to make amends, especially if he has inflicted an injury. He may return to his victim and unerringly reach for the exact same toe that he has bitten and carefully inspect the damage. He obviously knows precisely what he has done and where. Then he spends half an hour or more licking and cleaning the wound that he himself inflicted.

Another human emotion that has been elevated to a special status is disgust. In his book “Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique,” the neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga views disgust as one of the five emotional modules that set us apart from all other animals. Here, too, dogs are a prime example, given that they eat feces and lick their testicles. This is taken as proof that dogs must lack disgust. But give your dog a cut lemon (not recommended) and you will see a full-blown yuck! response with curled-up lips, drooling and withdrawal from the sour smell.'

Read the article here.

As Mr. De Waal points out, our emotions are not unique, animals are not 'stimulus-response machines' - although I would say that this is an apt description of many human beings - the 'emotional domain' doesn't separate us from other animals.
Perhaps it's language, not that I want us to be unique, but there must be a reason that humans have psychoanalysis and other animals must do without it.