After summarizing and discussing the literature on the relations between emotional attitudes and psychosomatic disease, the author describes primitive defense precursors of later desomatized, secondary-process verbalized responses. He proposes these precursors be called 'mantle defenses' as they function like an integument or magic cloak put on in perilous situations. An example is vomiting as a precursor to projection, both of them having the aim of getting rid of something unwanted and then instituting a barrier against it.