This paper reports on verbal content analysis measures (Gottschalk-Gleser method) of anxiety and hostility in duodenal ulcer, irritable bowel and generalized anxiety disorder patients, who were also administered the Eysenk Personality Inventory (EPI), and Beck and Zung depressiveness scales. Irritable bowel patients expressed significantly more death anxiety than the other groups in a 5-min free speech sample, while anxiety disorder patients scored highest on hostility directed inwards. In the whole sample, EPI neuroticism scores correlated with depressiveness scores and hostility measures appeared intercorrelated. Factor analyses with Varimax rotation revealed a similar clustering of variables. Results tend to suggest that irritable bowel patients are closer to anxiety disorder than to duodenal ulcer (‘psychosomatic’) patients in terms of intensity and patterning of affect expression.