The research questions in this study were. How do patients with stress-related behavior and somatoform disorders assess symptoms and self-image compared to healthy individuals, and how are these assessments related to bodily resources, assessed with a physiotherapeutic body examination? The test group (n = 31) consisted of consecutive patients referred to a treatment center specializing in psychosomatic problems. Significant differences (p < or = 0.01) were found between the test and comparison group (n = 22) on all but two of the ten subscales of the Resource-Oriented Body Examination (ROBE II). This was also the case for all the subscales of The Symptom Checklist-90(SCL-90; comparison group n = 52), and for all but three of the eight clusters of the Structural Analysis of Social Behavior (SASB) (comparison group n = 52). For the patient group, the ROBE II subscale Increased respiratory control correlated significantly with the SCL-90 subscales that measures Anger-hostility, Phobic anxiety, Paranoid ideation, with the Personality Severity Index (PSI) and with the SASB clusters Daydreaming and self-neglect, Self-indictment and oppression with r's between 0.38 and 0.50. Body examination with ROBE II might provide a useful assessment tool in patients whose stress-related problems appear to contain associations between psychological and physical problems.