The veneer of science makes ugly much that should have been without fault: Freud’s writings might have been flawless if he had simply seen himself as a philosopher continuing on the tradition of disillusioned moralists who believed that man’s motives are always far more complex than the motives he attributes to himself.
His place was among Bruyère, Rochefoucauld and Nietzsche — and not among the pseudoscientists. The methods of science are of the greatest value to the psychologist who would follow in this moralist tradition, but to make of it a science cripples it. Science crawls and cannot allow introspection as evidence, but the study of man is built upon introspection and leaps of intuition.
Freud’s major flaw was not only in his approach, as you say above, but in his test groups.