While the descriptive features of anorexia nervosa are well known and agreed upon, the level of personality organization and the character style of anorexia patients is more controversial. To study and compare the cognitive style and personality functioning of anorectic patients with that of conduct disordered patients, 20 adolescent females (10 anorectic, 10 conduct disordered), with average or above average intelligence, completed cognitive and projective psychological tests, 3 to 5 months following admission to a hospital treatment program. An analysis of the results showed that although both groups had high numbers of neuropsychological deficits, neither group was homogeneous in the kind of personality disorder. Cognitive difficulties were found in 6 out of the 10 anorexia records, and in only 3 out of the 10 conduct disordered records. As a group, the anorectic subjects did relatively poorly on recall of past or school-related learning and had difficulty in abstract reasoning and integration of new learning. On the unstructured Rorschach test, both groups showed lapses in ability to assess external reality, emotional concerns, developmental pathologies, and depressive images. However, the depressive responses of the anorectic subjects were followed by affective images, whereas the depressive responses of the conduct disordered subjects were followed by aggressive images. The anorectic subjects differed most from the conduct disordered subjects in number of paranoid images and symmetry responses. Finally, a significant number of Rorschach records of the anorectic group had suicidal indicators. (BL)