One breezy sunday night, Ah Fai walked out of Mody Road's Chinachem Golden Plaza building
without a care in the world. The 36-year-old lorry driver had just finished a five-day,
personal-growth training course. He felt empowered and full of hope.

He was emerging from a Life Dynamics seminar, which aims to teach self-awareness,
responsibility and communication skills. Life Dynamics seminars, which combine lectures,
exercises and discussions, are said to be able to transform ordinary lives into success
stories.

But for Ah Fai, the effect was shattering. His nascent confidence of that Sunday evening soon
crumpled and turned to confusion (see next page for his diary). By Wednesday, he had decided
to end his life. ''The trainer said I could be whoever I wanted to be. But I couldn't sleep,
my brain spun very fast with all my ideas. Sometimes I thought I would have a lot of
girlfriends . . sometimes I thought I could replace my boss . . . sometimes I wanted to be
[tycoon] Li Ka-shing,'' he says. ''I was very tired, but I couldn't rest. As I closed my eyes,
the thoughts spun in my brain again, it was very painful. I thought, 'If I die, I don't need
to think, and I won't be in pain anymore'.'' Far from feeling empowered, he felt his life was
a failure.

At least three companies now offer Life Dynamics seminars in the SAR, of which ARC
International is by far the largest. Ah Fai, who was not sent on the course by his company, is
one of more than 20,000 Hong Kong people in the past nine years who have attended ARC's $5,950 basic seminar of three evenings and two full days. An advanced five-day seminar is available at $9,950.

Persuaded by a friend who had attended the course, he went to a briefing in ARC's spacious
offices in early May. There he heard Life Dynamics success stories from enthusiastic trainers
and dozens of volunteers, many of whom were graduates of the programme. Insurance brokers sold more policies, secretaries were promoted to managers, quarrelling couples made up and single men found girlfriends, he was told. ''I really wanted to get a girlfriend, so I thought this
was right for me,'' says Ah Fai, who split up from his last girlfriend seven years ago. Finding love and wealth seemed great ideals, and if the course could help him, he thought, it would be worth it.

Instead, the day after he finished the course, he couldn't go to work. Rather than feeling
invigorated and inspired, he was numb and listless. ''I felt that I was being controlled, I felt like a dead person,'' he says.

The next day he went back to work, but deliberately failed to make his lorry deliveries and
drove around aimlessly. At the end of the day, Ah Fai told his boss that he had been unable to
control himself.

The next morning, he decided to commit suicide, and went as far as leaning out over the 23rd-
floor roof of his block. ''Just when I wanted to jump, another thought came to my mind: I thought maybe I could find a doctor to help me,'' he recalls. His family took him to the Hong Kong Baptist Hospital, where he was diagnosed as suffering from psychosis - a disorder which distorts sufferers' grip on reality and can cause delusions.

His private psychiatrist, Dr Chan Cho-mao, says Ah Fai had no history of mental illness before
he took the course. ''After he took the course, he heard voices telling him, 'You are useless,
you had better die','' says Chan.

ARC International's president, Mitch Feig-enberg, defends the Life Dynamics course. ''While
our seminars can be intense, the experience is no more so than many life events such as marriage, divorce, work or school in which people can feel stress,'' he says. ''Can you say the course made people crazy, have a nervous breakdown, or stressful? Not exactly. I don't think the course can cause people to have mental problems.''

Thousands of people have done Life Dynamics in Hong Kong, with no apparent adverse effects.
Many clients are satisfied and claim great benefits. One of these is Danny Mak, 43, the owner
of an engineering company. He says that after he went through Life Dynamics in June, he could
communicate better with his employees, motivating them to be more active and hard-working.
Another, Lao Sai-tak, 25, attended Life Dynamics a year ago, and says she became more positive and earned promotion from administration clerk to senior manager.

Ah Fai is not alone in his experience, however. Psychiatrists and social groups have seen a
small but significant number of people needing counselling and psychiatric treatment after
attending Life Dynamics seminars. These patients suffer disorders ranging from depression,
anxiety and sleep problems to more serious psychiatric problems such as neurosis and
psychosis, says Chan.

Since 1996, Yang Memorial Methodist Social Service alone has seen 10 such patients Ð most of
them with no prior history of mental illness, the group says. This year, it has already received three cases, including one who attempted suicide. Susan So Suk-yin, the family service division supervisor, worries that these cases are only the tip of the iceberg: many people refuse to admit to having mental problems because of the social stigma it would entail, so they would not seek help, and it becomes impossible to draw a true picture of the number of people affected, she says.

Every year, Kowloon Hospital psychiatrist Dr Chan Sai-yin and colleagues he knows at other
hospitals each receive one or two patients who have been to Life Dynamics. Most suffer from
psychosis.

''They lose contact with reality, as shown by delusions and disorganised behaviour,'' says
Chan. ''They would suddenly refuse to go to work and to eat, [they] lock themselves in their
room, go out on the streets at midnight. They did not respond to questions.''

Feigenberg says ARC's Life Dynamics courses do not have a psychologist on hand to give help in
an emergency, but he stresses that such situations are rare. ''If, during the course, we notice that people need assistance that we can't provide, we refer them to qualified professionals,'' he says.

American Robert White founded ARC International in Japan 25 years ago, and Life Dynamics
reached Hong Kong in 1991. From its headquarters in Japan, ARC runs seminars in eight cities,
including Sydney, Las Vegas, Taipei and Guangzhou.

In Hong Kong, Life Dynamics has recently enjoyed a resurgence. Formerly viewed as an offbeat
activity for expats and middle-class locals, it has become a magnet for market hawkers,
housewives, clerks, hairdressers, construction workers, chefs and high school students who
borrow money from banks, friends and relatives to pay for the course. Some say its new-found
popularity is a symptom of Hong Kong's stressful lifestyle. Nowadays it seems people are as
likely to attend a course as take their problems to a counsellor.

Consumers are nonetheless in the dark when they sign up. They join Life Dynamics courses
without knowing the specific content of the seminars, which the company keeps a closely-
guarded secret to preserve the ''spontaneity'' of activities, Feigenburg says. Participants
are required to agree not to reveal what goes on.

It is apparent, however, that the basic seminar has a session on the second day where students
are asked to ''discover'' themselves by recalling unhappiness in their past, a technique which
psychiatrists agree can be a trigger point for psychological problems.

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