In the last 20 years the survival rate of patients with congenital heart disease has increased considerably, thus psychological consequences of living with a heart defect have attracted considerable scientific attention. In our study psychological symptoms and the body image of patients with congenital heart disease were compared with the respective scores of general population samples (age: 14 - 45 years). Psychological symptoms were measured by means of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI; subscales: somatization, obsessive-compulsive thoughts, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, psychoticism). Body image was assessed with the FKB-20 body image questionnaire (subscales: rejection of the body, vitality). The patient group consisted of 361 women and men with congenital heart disease. For comparisons with the BSI, a sample of 1165 subjects was available. Comparisons with the FKB-20 were performed with data from a separate survey (N = 1169). After stratification for age and gender, in females only a few differences were found for both instruments. In males higher scores were obtained for "rejection of the body", and lower ones for "vitality". This does not apply to the highest age group (36 - 45 years). For all BSI-subscales except "depression", "phobic anxiety", and "psychoticism" marked differences between patients and controls were found in males and over all age groups. In women group differences emerged on some subscales (obsessive-compulsive thoughts, interpersonal sensitivity, anxiety, hostility, and phobic anxiety), but this does not hold for all age groups. These results do not apply to patients with the severest impairments due to congenital heart disease, because their number in our study was too low.