Some findings from the intensive case studies of five persons devoting their lives to humanitarian concerns are reported. Psychoanalytic interviewing, projective data, and personal material from the subjects suggested similarities in the inferred unconscious sources of their characterological altruism. The subjects' personas were characterized by helpfulness, sociophilia, and positive affect. Their central defenses included compulsivity, identification with the victim, and reversal. Their dynamics included the management of unconscious guilt or shame about hostility and greed. The inferred genetics of these dymanics included good-enough nurturance in the symbiotic phase of development; the loss of availability of the mothering object between the ages of two and three; and the timely intervention of an altruistic substitute figure, in the context of a subculture giving religious expression to the value of benevolence. These observations are related to pertinent studies on altruism in the literatures of psychoanalysis and academic psychology.