Given his relationship to Scientology, I believe you are underselling what he ends up promoting, even if what he says is something different. People often dress up their stated opinions to make them more palatable before going on to the next level, and I personally believe that's what he's doing. I have no proof positive of that, but that's what I think is happening.

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Szasz is talking about coerced "treatment", dealt out as punishment by the courts. Before you say this is a thing of the past, consider how many drug offenses are dealt with by the courts these days, where sentencing someone to treatment is very fasionable.

Let's examine the premise of this coerced treatment.

The first version of that I can think of is "treatment" as punishment for a drug-related offense. That ranges from drunk driving education to methadone. While I have no documentation, I seriously doubt that such a sentencee wouldn't be able to refuse such treatment in favor of a prison sentence. That's hardly coerced in my opinion.

The second version is institutionalization. I can understand the argument against, but I think the days of putting people like McMurphy in asylums is long gone. In fact, I'm sure it was long gone with when Cuckoo's Nest was written in 1962, and certainly by the time the film was made in 1975. In addition, unanesthetized ECT (with the physical grand mal seizures as depicted in Cuckoo's Nest and many other fictional media) is extraordinarily uncommon. The times I have visited mental health institutions, the people there either wanted to be there or obviously needed to be there, if not both. (You and I may potentially differ about the level at which need arises.)

The third version is forceful encouragement by a doctor. I think that this, as much of the rest of Szasz's arguments, much less common than he would have you believe. Where it does exist, I agree that it is a problem. There is definitely pushing by the pharmaceutical companies, but they have zero direct influence over either doctors or patients. If people are swayed by them, it's no different than effective advertisement.

In short, I believe that the types of cases that you describe are despicable, but also much more rare and less legal than you imply.