This work has the goal to evaluate the role of couples therapy in the treatment and prevention of recurrent violence among couples. Four psychologists - family and couples therapists - who had specialized in this area in educational institutions in Rio de Janeiro were interviewed. Five analytical categories emerged from the interviews: Understanding violence dynamics; Factors associated to the emergence of violence; The question of therapeutic framing; The problem of identifying various kinds of violence; Available resources to work with violence. The interviewed professionals deconstructed a disjunctive and reductionist conception of violence, which aims to identify perpetrators and victims to hold the latter responsible for their violent acts. As an alternative to this conception, therapists had appropriated a systemic perspective to understand the dynamics of violence among couples. From this perspective the focus is on the relationships marked by interactions that elicit the maintenance of violence. The anesthetic processes that diminish the sensitivity to violence and that are present in families where different forms of abuse take place, the choice for the therapeutic framing and the procedures to identify the different forms of violence were other themes that turned out relevant in treating couples in violent situations. The analysis of interviews showed that couples therapy, at least from the perspective of the interviewed professionals, is an important resource to deal with the problem in question.