Learn English – A word to describe someone who acts contrary to self-interest

There are a few metaphors that occur in Jo's Boys that resemble what you're talking about.

pp. 263: "They'd see and smell and feel the prison taint on me..."

pp. 327: "He longed to go home, but waited week after week to get the prison taint off him and the haggard look out of his face."

pp. 338: "All the old prison gloom seemed to settle like a black cloud on Dan's face..."

pp. 343: "... and to help wear away the first sharpness of the prison brand."

There is a concept in psychology called self-actualization. It was described by Abraham Maslow as

"the desire for self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for him [the individual] to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming."

You might consider self-actualized