Having worked in the FBI for a quarter of a century, Joe Navarro has seen his fair share of clinically diagnosed psychopaths, including the notorious assassin Ted Bundy.
But contrary to popular belief, psychopaths are not the ones capable of causing the most psychological destruction in another, the former federal agent recently said.
Navarro, who specialized in nonverbal communication during his long tenure with the FBI, revealed what the most dangerous personality type actually is.
He said that people with these personalities, by “overvaluing themselves and devaluing others” can cause great harm.
Ex-FBI agent Joe Navarro said malignant narcissists cause more “interpersonal” damage than psychopaths
Joe Navarro worked as an FBI special agent and supervisor in counterintelligence and behavioral assessment for 25 years and is a founding member of the bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Program.
During a recent interview with LADbible’s Honesy Box, Navarro explained that after finishing research for his 2014 book, Dangerous Personalities, he concluded that a malignant narcissist “does the most damage on an interpersonal level.”
He added that such behavior is generally displayed by males who have the said personality toward females as their victims: “The effects — psychological effects, emotional effects, as well as financial effects — are really quite numerous and quite devastating,” he said.
“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 continued.
Chicago Psychoanalytic Institute describes it as “a severe personality organization that combines pathological narcissism with antisocial behavior, paranoid tendencies, and ego-syntonic aggression, meaning aggression the person experiences as acceptable and even satisfying.”
The condition blends with several traits associated with regular narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), which is found in 1%–2% of the general population, according to a 2022 study. But it can be identified by an inflated sense of self-grandiosity, sadistic gratification, paranoid suspicion, and absence of remorse.
While NPD is officially recognized by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), malignant narcissism is not.
Psychopaths, such as Ted Bundy, are harder to spot, Navarro said
As for psychopaths, who Navarro said make up around 1% of the population, they are people who “clearly have no conscience” and are far more difficult to identify.
“They’re not bound by rules or by the letter of the law,” he said. “And they tend to be the ones that you see coming through the system, ending up in jail over and over, doing terrible things.”
He cited the example of Ted Bundy, with whom Navarro crossed paths as a rookie FBI officer in 1975 when he investigated the disappearance of 15-year-old Susan Curtis from the BYU campus, where she was attending a conference.
Years later, Bundy confessed to abducting and taking the life of the teen before his capital punishment in 1989.
Navarro expressed his lingering sorrow over not recognizing Bundy as a predator that night, but acknowledged that psychopaths such as him were difficult to spot.
“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.”
Several public figures, including Donald Trump, have been accused of having malignant narcissism
During a May 2021 segment of Real Time, TV personality Bill Maher accused “recurring celebrities running for higher office,” such as Caitlyn Jenner, Randy Quaid, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, and Matthew McConaughey, of having the personality.
He said that they “have suggested lately that when it comes to running the country, they have what it takes, and they do: malignant narcissism.”
US President Donald Trump has been alleged to have it as well by multiple mental health practitioners.
For instance, Johns Hopkins University psychologist John Gartner has been issuing warnings about the POTUS’ alleged “mental disorders” for nearly a decade and founded a professional organization called Duty to Warn at the beginning of Trump’s first presidency.
He told EL PAÍS in March 2026 about Trump: “He is a malignant narcissist.”
“Narcissism — many politicians have it — their desire is to dominate and be above everyone else: ‘I am the best president in history,’ ‘Nobody knows more than me about tariffs,’ etc.’”
Historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Benito Mussolini are often referred to as malignant narcissists by psychiatrists.
“They will destroy you.” The internet reacted to Joe Navarro’s analysis of malignant narcissists
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