Without Freud popularizing the idea of subconsciousness and ego

You might even say that he brought it out of the collective shadow.

Even the idea of comforting someone by talking about what happened, on the most casual level, was popularized by Freuds work.

Here I have to disagree, that stuff existed as a practice since basically time immemorial. It's what confessionals are about. The framing as more of a medicinal practice than spiritual one was certainly novel, though we don't really know how practitioners in pre-Christian times saw it. E.g. when you had martial issues in Rome you might go to the appropriate temple (Juno) and you'd state your troubles, then they'd perform some ritual and you'd be given rites to perform yourself and I can totally see the priestesses going "yeah he's got his head up his arse let's trick him into realising that he should hug his wife once in a while", then select specific rites that make that outcome likely. Is that not serving the goddess of marriage?

Less religious, the Stoics (and generally philosophy but especially the Stoics) had a tradition of advise letters, while those were often generic and not at all always prompted by actual questions from actual people you wouldn't have such a format if people didn't go to philosophers to be given advise about all kinds of stuff, much of it psychological: They would have written straight-up monologues instead. Random example, Seneca's De Ira: "You have demanded of me, Novatus, that I should write how anger may be soothed, and it appears to me that you are right in feeling especial fear of this passion, which is above all others hideous and wild [...]" (cue a dissertation).

Lastly... talk therapy is also kinda overrated. You can psychoanalyse yourself to understanding, but not to health, that needs some kind of action-impulse -- which can become more likely with psychoanalysis, but that doesn't make it a necessity. All those clinically depressed men in WWII who were suddenly "magically" healed and drove ambulances didn't need to understand anything about the mechanics of their psyche, realising "oh there's actually a way I can be useful" itself did it.

Oh I agree, Freud's work was important. As was Aristotle's. But if Aristotle had suffered much of the scrutiny that Freud has, science would have advanced a lot faster. Obviously extremely unlikely though, given that Aristotle kinda predated science.

A lot of what he said was just plain wrong, and without the existence of the scientific method back then, no one really questioned him. For example, he basically made the only argument justifying slavery in ancient times, and he notably also got a lot of physics wrong that took until Galileo's time to get resolved, such as with gravity and the elements.