I just got back from the 25th Jubilee World Congress of Viktor Frankl’s Logotherapy in Chicago—four days of international scholarship, conversation, and fellowship centered around the ideas of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis.

It was amazing.

It was also one of those exhausting weeks I never wanted to end.

I presented early in the conference on Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy and the opportunities I believe Logotherapy has to influence its trajectory. As psychedelic therapies continue to move from research settings into broader clinical practice, I think there is an important conversation to be had about what happens after an experience that may be profound, disorienting, spiritual, psychologically disruptive, or some combination of all four. Having an experience is one thing. Integrating it into a meaningful life is another.

But as meaningful as presenting was for me, it wasn’t the part of the conference I’ve thought about most since coming home.

That distinction belongs to my daughter.

She drove up to Chicago to watch me present. The plan was pretty simple: hear Dad give his talk, maybe have lunch with a friend in the city, and head home.

Then she saw the agenda.

“Maybe I will stay for an extra day,” she said.

An extra day became another presentation she wanted to hear. Then another.

Eventually it became, “I really want to see that last speaker. I’ll go home after that.”

Except she didn’t.

Because after the last presentation came something that wasn’t printed on the agenda.

There was the fellowship of a group of people who hadn’t been together in person for more than six years and weren’t quite ready to say goodbye.

My daughter got to sit and talk with Dr. Jay Levinson, who knew Viktor Frankl personally and was his intern and friend for decades. She met Katja Ratheiser Frankl, the granddaughter of Viktor and Elly Frankl. She snuck the mic and asked Alex Vesely, Viktor and Elly’s grandson, a question – relating to the idea, that, like her, he may not have had the opportunity to “choose” Logotherapy, but found herself immersed in it.  (One of my former professors, and now a peer, was sure to point out, “Oh!  She got you good!!”) And then the two of us spent hours late into the evening talking with Logotherapists from Turkey, Germany, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

There was something remarkable about watching my daughter experience this world that has meant so much to me.

She didn’t grow up reading Frankl because she had to. Logotherapy wasn’t assigned homework at the Franz house. And I certainly didn’t bring her to Chicago expecting to convert her into the next generation of Logotherapists.

She simply became curious.

And maybe that’s what has stayed with me.

We spend a great deal of time worrying about what the next generation is interested in. We worry about attention spans, social media, technology, artificial intelligence, disconnection, anxiety, and whether young people are finding enough substance in a culture increasingly designed around speed and distraction.

Then I watched a young woman who planned to stay for a few hours rearrange her schedule because she wanted to hear people talk about freedom, responsibility, suffering, meaning, and what it means to be human.

Apparently those questions still have some life in them.

Of all the presentations we heard, my daughter and I agreed that one of the most thought-provoking was Cristina Cox’s presentation, “Ancient Self-Knowledge and Human Freedom in the Age of the Algorithm.”

Spoiler alert: she had quite a bit to say about scrolling.

More specifically, the presentation raised questions about what happens to human freedom when increasingly sophisticated algorithms learn what captures our attention and then continually feed us more of it.

That’s not merely a technology question.

It’s a Logotherapy question.

Frankl’s understanding of human beings rests heavily on the idea that there is a space between what happens to us and how we respond. We are influenced by biology, psychology, culture, circumstances, and certainly technology—but we are not simply reducible to those influences. Human freedom may be limited, but within those limits we retain the capacity to take a position toward what confronts us.

And that raises an uncomfortable question in the age of the algorithm:

What happens when we voluntarily surrender that space?

Think about how easily it happens. We pick up the phone to check one thing and twenty minutes later discover that we have been watching, reading, clicking, and scrolling through content we never consciously decided to consume.

The algorithm is doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The more important question may be whether we are doing what we were designed to do.

A meaningful life requires more than being stimulated. It requires attention, intention, relationship, responsibility, and participation. Meaning usually asks something of us. It asks us to love someone, create something, serve something, endure something, notice something, or respond to something life has placed before us.

Scrolling asks considerably less.

And yet, sitting in that conference reminded me that there is another side to this story.

For four days, people from different countries, generations, professions, and backgrounds gathered in actual rooms and wrestled with ideas together. They listened. They disagreed. They asked questions. They shared meals. They told stories. They stayed long after the formal program ended because the conversation mattered more than getting to bed on time.

My daughter came to hear her dad speak.

She stayed because she found something worth paying attention to.

Perhaps that’s the part I don’t want to forget.

We talk frequently about how difficult it is to capture people’s attention today. Maybe the better question is whether we are giving them something worthy of it.

Meaning doesn’t need to compete with the algorithm by becoming louder, faster, or more entertaining.

It needs to be encountered.

Sometimes through a book.

Sometimes through a teacher.

Sometimes through a conversation with someone who once sat across from Viktor Frankl.

Sometimes around a table late at night with people from Turkey, Germany, the UK, and the United States who aren’t quite ready for the conversation to end.

And sometimes through watching your daughter say, “Maybe I’ll stay one more day.”

I went to Chicago excited to present some of my own thinking about the future of Logotherapy.

I came home thinking just as much about its future in a completely different way.

Twenty-five World Congresses later, people are still gathering around Viktor Frankl’s ideas because the fundamental questions haven’t gone away.

Who am I?

What am I responsible for?

Where does my freedom remain?

What deserves my attention?

And what is life asking of me?

No algorithm can answer those questions for us.

Perhaps that’s precisely why we still need to ask them.

Here’s wishing you a meaningful week—and perhaps a little less scrolling.

Until next Monday,

Dr. Dan