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This article puts the psychology of the scientific mind back in its rightful context, after having been obscured when epistemology diverged from psychology. At the intersection of genetic psychology and the history of science, some of the philosophers who dealt with the scientific mind before Bachelard approached it from the viewpoint of behavioural studies. Gaston Bachelard adopts the latter perspective in order to show how scientific practice is a situated, embodied activity. He takes over from now-forgotten philosophers such as Louis Gérard-Varet, who presented scientific knowledge as a prohibition of primitive assertions. Pursuing in his own way the constructivist epistemology of his predecessors, Bachelard does not identify his approach with that used in empirical psychology. He responds to the charge of psychologism in the same way as Léon Brunschvicg, his precursor, and as Jean Piaget, his contemporary. The purpose of this study is to shed light on and to contextualise Bachelard’s thinking, avoiding the distortion brought about by retrospective patterns of interpretation.