A former FBI agent has warned about a disturbing personality profile he believes can be even more destructive than a psychopath.
Joe Navarro, who served for 25 years as an FBI special agent and supervisor working in counterintelligence and counterterrorism, said psychopaths make up roughly 1 percent of the population.
Navarro described psychopaths as people with little or no conscience, no real respect for rules, and a pattern of moving in and out of the criminal justice system after committing serious offenses.
Although psychopaths are often viewed by experts as among the most dangerous personality types, Navarro argues that the malignant narcissist may inflict the greatest harm in close personal relationships.
Malignant narcissism is generally understood as an extreme form of narcissism that blends grandiosity and entitlement with antisocial tendencies, paranoia, and a cruel satisfaction in other people’s pain.
Psychologists and mental health commentators have frequently pointed to infamous historical and political leaders, including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, as examples often associated with malignant narcissistic traits.
“A malignant narcissist overvalues themselves and devalues others, and that discrepancy causes great harm,” Navarro told LADBible.
He also said the pattern is most commonly seen in men, with women often becoming the victims and experiencing both emotional trauma and financial damage as a result.
While many researchers consider psychopaths to be the most malevolent and dangerous of them all, the former FBI agent believes that a malignant narcissist ‘does the most damage on an interpersonal level’
Navarro joined the FBI at the age of 23, making him one of the youngest agents in the agency’s history.
During his career, he worked as a criminal profiler and was a founding member of the FBI National Security Division Behavioral Analysis Program, which applies behavioral psychology and personality assessments to national security investigations.
Navarro also revealed his take on the most dangerous personality.
‘I have to say from the mail that I have received over the last 10 or 12 years since writing that book that the malignant narcissist is probably the one that does the most damage,’ he told LADbible this week.
Malignant narcissism is not an official mental health diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), the standard reference book used by mental health and medical professionals in the US to diagnose and classify mental disorders.
However, it is a clinical term for the most harmful end of the narcissism spectrum.
Signs of a malignant narcissist include a lack of remorse, disregard for people’s pain or feelings, feeling attacked or tricked, and needing to be in charge through lies, fear and manipulation.
‘While certain criminals who rob banks and rob people tend to be in the area of psychopathy or sociopathy, the malignant narcissist tends to do, I think, the most interpersonal damage,’ Navarro said.
Joe Navarro spent 25 years as a special agent and supervisor in counterintelligence and counterterrorism
Navarro crossed paths with Ted Bundy’s (above) orbit as a young rookie officer in 1975, when he investigated the disappearance of 15-year-old Susan Curtis from a college campus where he was on patrol duty
As for psychopaths, Navarro said they can not be easily spotted, as many are very functional.
He gave serial killer Ted Bundy as an example, noting how he was very good-looking, erudite and the judges loved him.
‘If he was walking down the street, could you point and say, “Well, there goes the psychopath,”‘ said Navarro.
‘No. You really have to observe their behaviors and how they treat others and how they view others and whether or not they have a conscience.’
Navarro crossed paths with Ted Bundy’s orbit as a young rookie officer in 1975 when he investigated the disappearance of Susan Curtis from a college campus where he was on patrol duty.
Years later, the serial killer confessed to abducting and murdering the 15-year-old just before his execution in 1989.
Navarro has openly shared his lingering sorrow over not recognizing Bundy as a predator at the time, believing he may have even seen the killer cruising the campus that night.
