This paper proposes the identification and the analysis of three different ways to conceptualize prayer in social sciences and humanities since the publication of Marcel Mauss’s essay (1909). Those three debated conceptualizations of prayer through the 20^th century are determined by a variation in discursive strategies and relationships to the theological-religious. Normalized, prayer is defined according to its form deemed ideal. Enchanted, it is put to the service of the homo religious theories. Disenchanted, it is brought back to a social-psychological construct. By noting the potential fruitfulness as well as the analytical limitations of each of these theoretical options, the aim of this article is to reveal their complementarity in order to sketch the features of a new possible way to study prayer.