This guy is pretty important:
Heinz Werner (February 11, 1890, Vienna - May 14, 1964, Worcester, Massachusetts) was an Austrian developmental psychologist.
His orthogenic principle has been an influential approach to the concept of development. According to this principle development "proceeds from a state of relative lack of differentiation to a state of increasing differentiation and hierarchic integration" on all levels of the person.
Distancing is a concept arising from the work of developmental psychologists Werner and Bernard Kaplan to describe the process of establishing a subject's individuality and identity as an essential phase in coming to terms with symbols, referential language and eventually full cognition and linguistic communication. Werner and Kaplan's work was later expanded and edified into more refined therapeutic practice by the pioneer in deaf-blind patient therapy, such as Dr. Jan Van Dijk, and then later refined by the work of Dr. Susan Bruce