Instead of marginalizing madness within a discourse of Western reason and locking it away as an unthought negative in thinking, Maldiney places it at the center of his philosophical-anthropological inquiries. Madness is tasked with providing insight into the essence of human existence. In the crisis of emerging psychosis, he seeks to conceptualize those forces that simultaneously threaten and sustain one's existential plasticity. In doing so, Maldiney draws on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and other disciplines. The questions he raises regarding philosophy and psychiatry are critically and illuminatingly related to the German-speaking movement of phenomenological psychopathology.