HOW DOES MENTAL TIME TRAVEL IN THE EUCHARIST AID PSYCHOSPIRITUAL GROWTH?

Abstract This paper innovatively connects the Eucharist, which is usually considered to be in the domain of theology, with the concept of personality‐growth—the idea that a person’s personality can get better—which is usually considered to be in the domain of experimental psychology. I make this innovative connection by drawing on a scientific survey of studies on personality‐growth in experimental psychology to examine the experience of shared mental time travel that occurs in the Eucharist. Mental time travel is the cognitive ability of mentally travelling back in time in episodic memory and mentally travelling forward in time in episodic future‐directed imagination. Episodic memory is memory of past events; similarly, episodic future‐directed imagination involves imagining future events. Episodic memory is in contrast with semantic memory, which is memory of facts. The argument in this paper is in two stages. First, I argue that episodic thinking contributes to personality‐growth. That is, self‐projecting (to re‐live past events and to pre‐live future ones in mental time travel) aids personality‐growth. Second, I advance an isomorphic argument to the first, I argue that shared projection in liturgical anamnesis of the Eucharist aids psychospiritual growth. This work is grounded in contemporary experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and philosophy of memory.