A year later, in 1909, Werner realized that this was not his desire, and transferred to the University of Vienna with a new plan to become a composer and music historian.
While at the university, Werner was exposed to a variety of new materials, and found that he was increasingly interested in philosophy and psychology.
During his time at the university, he was productive in his research, publishing several articles in these fields, and simultaneously carried the title of co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Psychologie.
Following the death of his wife, he left the university for his first teaching position in the United States at Brooklyn College working on the effects of brain damage in 1942.
His research at the university, as many of his other positions, focused primarily on perception and language, and collaborated with his colleagues Seymour Wapner and Bernard Kaplan on several projects.
[8][9] Distancing is a concept arising from the work of developmental psychologists Heinz 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.