ABSTRACT
The scholars of the Frankfurt school did not seem to favor the study of the religious factor of twentieth-century society, particularly after their "critical theory of society" and the "negative dialectic." Erich Fromm was representative of the Frankfurt school. However, after his departure for the United States, he moved away from the positions of his German colleagues. Indeed, Psychoanalysis and Religion was the title of a short book Fromm published in 1950. The fact that a considerable number of ministers study psychoanalysis indicates how far this belief in the blending of psychoanalysis and religion has penetrated the field of ministerial practice. As for Fromm, he too formulated, with some difficulty, his own personal definition of religion: "any system of thought and action shared by a group which gives the individual a frame of orientation and an object of devotion".
