The purpose of this paper is to obtain insight into the intrapsychic processes observed in persons when they become emotionally involved in the causes of political freedom and independence. The author selected four relatively mature, unneurotic persons who were under psychoanalytic observation during August 1968, at the time when armed forces of the USSR and other Warsaw Pact countries occupied the Czecho-Slovakian Socialist Republic, and considered them with respect to their affective participation in these events. The essential psychodynamic and life-historical lines of development of these analysands were compared with their political attitude, and a number of general conclusions were drawn. It was noted that idiosyncratic conflicts are mobilized and provide energies to ego activities which are therefore sublimated, but not conflict-free. These findings are discussed in the framework of ego psychology. They are not inconsistent with Heinz Hartmann's views, and they agree with the ideas of Rapaport concerning the relative autonomy of the ego.