Proponents of couples approaches argue that the mental health community should not impose its values on those assaulted women who wish to continue the relationship with their partner, but respectful of the woman's attachment to her partner, should offer interventions that alter dysfunctional interactions that are associated with violence. Critics of this approach contend that couples therapy in the context of violence ignores power imbalances within the couple, engages in victim-blaming, and compromises the woman's safety once again. In this paper, we set aside the political and ideological debate and examine the issue from a scientific perspective. We evaluate the soundness of the conceptual foundation of couple approaches to violence by matching the assumptions of each approach with the large body of research on violence against women. Our literature search yielded 25 articles published since 1980 describing systemic and cognitive-behavioural couple approaches to violence within the marriage.
Systemic approaches view violence as a symptom of deeper dysfunction with the relationship.
Cognitive-behavioural couples approaches are based on the assumption that violent men have difficulties with assertiveness, poor communication skills, and dysfunctional cognitions that are associated with escalations in conflict. Women in turn are assumed to have characteristics that make them susceptible to victimization, to engage in coercive interactional patterns, or to have tendencies that reinforce the man's violent behaviour. Across both systemic and cognitive-behavioural couples therapy for violence, the first stage of therapy focuses on elimination of violence within the relationship and the second stage examines dysfunctional and coercive interactions between the partners. Having briefly highlighted key features of couples approaches, we then examine the empirical support for the conceptual foundations of couples approaches to violence within the marriage. Overall, there is a good match between the assumptions of couples approaches and the empirical literature on men who are violent.