Laura Josephs, Ph.D.

About

Every egg that enters Weill Cornell’s donor program is psychologically screened by a woman with no M.D. after her name. Laura Josephs, Ph.D., is the consulting psychologist embedded in the Ronald O. Perelman and Claudia Cohen Center for Reproductive Medicine, and the role is exactly as load-bearing as it sounds: donor evaluation, counseling for IVF and donor-egg patients, and the drop-in women’s support group that runs inside the Center.

She trained as a clinical psychologist at Adelphi University’s Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies, holds a postdoctoral certificate in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy from New York’s Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, and works at the intersection of obstetrics, gynecology and mental health. At NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital she founded the Ob/Gyn-Psych clinic, a weekly consultation service that brings psychological care to women whose problems start in the body — high-risk pregnancy, postpartum illness, infertility — but land in the mind.

Her scope at CRM covers individual and marital therapy through treatment, pregnancy loss, and the particular psychology of third-party reproduction. She has published widely in medical publications, lectures nationally on women’s health psychology, and brings to the work her own history through infertility — a fact she discloses to patients, because few counselors understand a positive test that ends in loss the way she does.

Clinical Expertise

• Egg Donor Screening: Psychological evaluation of CRM’s donor candidates — motivation, coping, disclosure and family-history review
• IVF and Donor Egg Therapy: Individual and couples counseling for patients inside both programs, from first injection through transfer and two-week wait
• Pregnancy and Infant Loss: Grief work after miscarriage, stillbirth and failed cycles
• Third-Party Reproduction: Psychological assessment and support for donor gamete and gestational-carrier families
• Perinatal Mental Health: Anxiety and depression during pregnancy and the postpartum period, via the Ob/Gyn-Psych clinic she founded
• Marital Therapy Under Treatment Strain: Couples work when fertility timelines collide with the relationship

Why Choose Dr. Josephs

She sits inside the medical team, not across town. Referrals are not theoretical at CRM — she sees patients in the same building as their reproductive endocrinologists, which is rare among fertility psychologists.

One niche, credentialed twice. A clinical psychology doctorate plus a postdoctoral psychoanalysis and psychotherapy certificate, applied to fertility care.

She built the integration model. The Ob/Gyn-Psych clinic at NewYork-Presbyterian — weekly psychological consultation for obstetrical and gynecological patients — exists because she founded it.

Credentialed by the field. Listed on the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology; active in ASRM’s Psychological Special Interest Group and the American Society of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Lived experience, disclosed. Her own path through infertility informs how she counsels the patients most clinics lose to silence.

Professional Affiliations

National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology; American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Psychological Special Interest Group; American Society of Psychosomatic Obstetrics and Gynecology. Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Psychiatry Department at Weill Cornell Medical College, where she teaches and supervises; author of numerous articles in leading medical publications and a national lecturer on women’s health psychology.

Suitable For

• IVF patients who feel the treatment wearing on them: Counseling scheduled around monitoring visits, in the same building as the clinic
• Donor-conceived families: Assessment and guidance before choosing eggs, sperm or a gestational carrier — and after
• Egg donors: The screening interview every CRM donor goes through is hers
• Patients after loss: Miscarriage, stillbirth or failed transfers handled by a psychologist who specializes in reproductive grief
• Couples drifting apart during treatment: Marital therapy designed for the specific pressure of timed sex and negative tests
• Expectant and new mothers with depression or anxiety: Accessible through the Ob/Gyn-Psych clinic she founded