Dangerous Personalities: An FBI Profiler Shows You How to Identify and Protect Yourself from Harmful People

This book, more than almost all others, is a must read. Everyone who works, goes to school, lives in a neighborhood or family, or who dates, needs this book. The checklists alone are worth more than gold. They're for regular people to use to assess if someone in their sphere is dangerous. They even help you evaluate HOW dangerous they are. Then he provides the reader with vital information about what to do when they're around a dangerous person. The book is concise and easy to use as a reference book after you've read it. He has an excellent bibliography, too. If everyone read this book, life would be so much more peaceful.

Love this book used to work with Joe. I give these two PhD interns and students so they understand more about criminal psychology, and dangerous personalities even though this is not a academic text. It really does help. I’ve been able to teach their clients things that may never thought they would be able to based off of what this book is written on.

This book is not a clinical reference book. It is written to help the lay person spot and identify difficult personalities in their lives. Mr. Navarro explicitly states that throughout the book so any review that complains about terminology or the descriptive checklists needs to examine the goal the author has set forth in the preface and introduction. I found that reading the descriptions of difficult personalities made it easier to put into perspective what one experiences first hand. It is well worth the dime and time to actually read about such difficult people and have helpful advice between the same book covers. It was time well spent.

Joe's work is, by far, my favorite out of anything I have ever encountered. With any behavioral analysis there is always a considerable margin of error. Joe has his methods dialed in as TIGHT as it can be. He does not waste a single word, and ALL his advice has the highest level of practical accuracy. Not perfect, but as good as it can be. This particular book errs on overinterpretation at times for the purposes of protecting victims. Therefore, overinterpretation is warranted. However, I would caution against following the checklists in police and intelligence work blindly without knowing HOW and WHY each line ended up on the checklists, considering the big picture, plus other relevant information about the suspect or the person analyzed. Successful, accurate, rapid (on a timescale of an interview or interrogation) practical behavioral analysis takes YEARS to develop, if not a decade, or it takes an INCREDIBLE about of work and effort, plus practical experience. However, Joe's books, especially this one are, by far, the ABSOLUTE BEST, for the fastest path to real-time mastery. If you are doing police, intelligence, or counterintelligence work, you'd be right to near memorize Joe's books. That would be a good start. A true mark of a super high level expert like Joe is: conciseness, HUGE punch in content, perfect organization of content, and high level of practically applicable accuracy. Thank you, Agent Navarro, for sharing your NOVEL, UNIQUE and hard-earned experience with the public! Thank you for your service and continued service in retirement, Sir!

This book is a must read for anyone who works with the public. I highly recommend reading this book now.

My expectations for this book really damaged my enjoyment of it. With a Joe Navarro book, I was expecting it to be full of nonverbal cues and “tells” that would help me spot dangerous people from a distance, and was hoping for specific advice for how to deal with these toxic people. This book has neither of those, but it does have thorough and detailed descriptions of the types of people who do the most harm, and really could help readers identify toxic personalities in their lives before it’s too late. Tread carefully if you already have PTSD or other wounds from harmful people, as the accounts in this book can be major triggers.

I'll give a brief overview before I get into my opinions. This book claims to teach you how to recognize people with dangerous personalities so you can avoid these people before they do harm to you or your loved ones. There are 4 basic dangerous personalities: I created the acronym N.E.P.P. to help me remember. --Narcissist --Emotionally unstable --Paranoid --Predator The author writes for the lay man and as such there is no psychopath or sociopath category, instead he simply lumps them together and calls them "Predators". Bipolar, Histrionic, etc... All lumped into Emotionally unstable and never more. Your assessment of people with these characteristics are viewed with a a scale because many normal people will have a little bit of one or all of the four. It isn't until they start to score high that they become a problem. The above is my summary, and here is my opinion: This book mostly sucks. The problem with this book is that it isn't helpful for the few things I really wanted out of it. The three things are this....... One: To make a quick assessment of whether or not a person is safe for a child. Two: To make a quick assessment about my date(I do online dating) to figure out if this person is safe for me. Three: On job interviews(I'm looking for a job with a better environment), to make a quick assessment to see if the work environment is going to be safe/healthy for me. The book doesn't assist in quick anything. By a large margin the book requires you to get to know the person on a somewhat deep level. I think this book only works for people who already have someone in their life and they can't figure out if what they are seeing is all in their head or possibly they are with a toxic individual. In that sense the book really fails to do what I think it's job was/is. The book also has many bad fear mongering sentences that an emotionally unstable paranoid type might latch onto. Like the Narcissist chapter said that caressing or kissing to get sex was narcissistic. It just isn't, what the author probably meant, was that coercion, and a disregard for what the person actually wants is an indication of Narcissism. There were too many little things like that which could be misinterpreted. There was some helpful things in this book, I will now be looking for extremes in the four categories and combinations of, but my search continues for something a little better at speed reading people.

A useful and worthwhile book that helps the "average" person to honor his or her instincts against those destructive people who often enter their lives. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we didn't need such survival guides, but the world is what it is, and it's better to be educated and prepared when these frightening predators and leeches come our way. Joe Navarro's experience as an FBI agent gives the book power and authenticity, and his co-author Toni Sciarra Poynter helps the writing to feel accessible, elegant, and informal. This isn't a clinical book which diagnoses illness and borderline personalities: it's instead a guide for those who encounter such problematical and often terrifying people, showing case studies and possible solutions to such entanglements. The checklists are thorough and some of the stories are disturbing, but that's the point. What comes across most clearly is that often (too often) we ignore our instincts against people who seem "off" to us, or who are irritating or bullying. The culture expects us to "get along," and often this means dismissing our gut-- which tells us frequently, "get away from this person." Navarro's book encourages readers to honor their feelings and to respect their conscience when they sense they are in a bad relationship, work environment, or unpleasant public encounter. There's a list of resources for those who have been abused or who are in peril in the back of the book, and the authors makes it a point to reinforce their important message: "It's NEVER okay for others to abuse, use, or harm you, and you have the right to call them on it, to escape, to call the police, or to tell them to stop." I don't think this book is only for those who have already suffered: it might help potential victims to recognize the warning signs of dangerous people BEFORE a crisis unfolds, and save themselves a lifetime of suffering, regret, or pain. Recommended.