The objective of this study was to learn, from the perspective of the psychiatric patient, what facilitates or blocks occupational performance. The informant sample comprised 24 adult patients from a private, general hospital, psychiatric unit. The informants were interviewed with a set of open-ended questions. The interview transcripts were then thematically analyzed. The thematic analysis led to inferences about what facilitated or blocked performance of activities of daily living in the sample studied. The results indicated that performance was blocked or facilitated by the informant's predispositions (early family experience, personality dynamics, and self-concept). The research approach provided the basic data for analyses of what motivates or inhibits human behavior in hospitalized pscyhiatric patients.