Joan Emerson originally prepared to be Spanish teacher but soon found her niche as a N.Y.C. public school Guidance Counselor. She worked with students and parents in elementary and senior high schools around learning problems, social adjustment issues and family relationship difficulties. At the same time, she ran support groups for women at the Union Center, for well-spouses of people with Multiple Sclerosis, and for people with eating disorders. She completed a doctorate in Counseling Psychology at New York University and was licensed by New York State to practice Psychology in 1992. Since then, she has had a practice mainly in individual and family psychotherpy.

Recently, she has been especially interested in working with couples and completed two graduate training programs in couples counseling, the first, through the Brooklyn Institute for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy and the other through the Institute for Imago Relational Therapy. She is excited by the opportunities to work with couples as she has learned some especially valuable techniques through Imago training and finds them very helpful in guiding relationships through troubled times.