This chapter traces the romantic roots of Heinz Werner’s organismic theory of development, focusing on its philosophical and scientific origins in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Drawing on figures such as Goethe, Herder, and Hegel, it outlines an alternative to Enlightenment models that reduce nature to static parts and linear causality. Instead, organismic theory emphasizes dynamic wholes, qualitative transformation, and the unity of the mind. Goethe’s genetic method and concept of Urphänomen (a generative, symbolic form) become central to understanding development as a progressive process of increasing differentiation and integration. Werner extended these ideas to psychology, emphasizing physiognomic perception, the dynamic coexistence of levels, and the distancing function of symbolic media. The chapter critically evaluates Werner’s use of comparative developmental principles across cultures—noting both the promise and limitations of his approach—and concludes with a discussion of his theorizing of language (and symbols more generally) in children’s development. In doing so, the chapter puts forward an approach to development centered on the whole person acting on the world within the possibilities and constraints of the physical environment and cultural media available to them.