Was Freud a scientist?

While Freud was inarguably an influential figure on psychology and Western thought in general, it is up for debate whether he was actually a scientist. He certainly viewed himself as a scientist who was exploring the nature of the mind, but many have argued that his theories lack scientific rigor in an essential way. Karl Popper, a 20th century philosopher who wrote a lot about science, argued that Freud's theories of the mind, including his ideas of the subconscious, the structure of the mind, and psychosexual development, were fundamentally unfalsifiable, and thus unscientific. Popper maintained that falsifiable, testable hypotheses were key to science, as they provided the basis for theories. To be falsifiable and testable, a theory should be able to be tested by experiments such that an experimental result could discredit the theory and lead scientists to discard it. Freud's theories, though, are arguably so vague that they can basically be stretched to account for any result. I think the excerpt from class from Interpretation of Dreams, kind of provides an example of this. While the interpretation of the dream given is presented such that while it may seem like a bit of a stretch, there is a sort of logic to the narrative given by Freud, I kind of felt like Freud could and would have interpreted any dream in such a way to follow his theory. Despite this, though, there is an argument that Freud made considerable contributions to the science of neurology and psychology by moving the field of study forward and considering the topics in an analytical manner. This argument is somewhat weakened by the fact that he often pushed these fields of study forward in the wrong directions, as many of his ideas were later discredited. While there's probably no single answer as to how we should consider Freud, to me it seems that many of his theories were both inaccurate and fundamentally unscientific, in spite of whatever contributions to science he might have had.