Reddit reviews Deeper and Deeper

Here's a short book that might help you with starting your stage show

To add:

Theodore Barber, one of the two researchers in that paper, made hypnosis a lifelong study. He is credited not with disproving forms of hypnosis, but rather demonstrating that power of suggestion alone can work just as well.

From a posthumous piece on Theodore Barber [New York Times]:

Earlier, in a series of experiments performed door to door, he and other researchers found that they could induce sleepiness by suggestion alone, without the swinging watches or formal protocols used by hypnotists. Power of suggestion worked effectively on about 20 percent of the people tested, although another 25 percent had no reaction.

The results stimulated Dr. Barber's interest in the hypnotic state, and he examined people who could be easily or deeply hypnotized. In the 1970's, he helped identify a small minority - 2 percent to 4 percent of the population - who were especially responsive, and he then studied the group. With other researchers, he found that the people most susceptible to hypnosis included those who were "gifted fantasizers" or "amnesia prone."

The more recent book Hypnosis: Research Developments And Perspectives cites your article and comes to many of the same conclusions, but decides not to try to disprove the "hypnotic" cause of the various measured effects, they merely sought out to re-define the word. They cite Barber's research in many points, even detailing the exact "stage hypnosis" instructions that Meeker and Berber were given when they did their influential 1971 study.

Both the study by Fromm and the lifelong study by Barber come to the same conclusions:

The power of suggestion can have a real effect on people, more so with certain "highly suggestible" people.

"Stage" Hypnotists use their know-how to capitalize on every available opportunity to enhance suggestibility and screen for it. This, more than "hypnosis", is their skill.

Hypnotherapists use suggestion and various other tools and techniques to enhance "suggestibility" but don't always have the option to do screening. They have a different outcome in mind as well - one of healing a patient.

Part of the problem in Hypnosis is its definition is rarely agreed upon. I've been a member of a serious non-reddit hypnosis forum for a few years now, and I have learned not to bring it up. If you want to start a fight amongst a room full of hypnotists, ask one of them to define it.

I define hypnosis as the systematic use of suggestion to elicit a desired result. In this way, I can sit on the fence and say that Yeah, they're both real. Having done and performed hypnosis, I have no problem with what a stage hypnotist does - even though he's essentially "re-branding" screened-for compliance as hypnosis for the sake of suspending an audience's disbelief. This is a necessary evil, and is necessary to be able to handle the randomness and chaos of audience participation. I don't have any doubt that a good "stage" hypnotist would be able to produce real therapeutic results in a one-on-one session, with different techniques, but on stage, with short time, this method is the safest and most reliable.

That said, those interested in really understanding how this works and the various techniques involved should get it right from the source. Jonathan Chase has a long history of successful stage hypnosis, and the book I've linked to details exactly the techniques used. In chapter one he explains presentation, and how it is key that you simply make sure everyone expects you to be "THE Hypnotist!". You must not leave any doubt, and you must follow through on this to the letter. He explains why it won't work on your family or friends, because they won't see you as "THE Hypnotist!", they'll just see you as "my friend", or "my son", or whatever. Most of the book is about seeding expectations and building compliance so that you can suggest further compliance. It's a cycle.

"Remember that everything relies on the volunteers’ belief systems. Stage Hypnosis works because they want it to and believe it can. Therefore once hypnotised they will behave in the way they believe to be correct for the state of mind they believe they are in." -Jonathan Chase

Also of note is fantastic hypnotist James Tripp who has recently just released his class to the public on Youtube. Here's a hypnotist who, in a one-on-one conversation can get people to forget their names, numbers, or become stuck to the floor or unable to move their arms. And he does it without ever putting them into "trance" or with the command to "Sleep!", which you've probably seen in hypnosis videos. His method works. It's just power of suggestion, but it exists in a powerful framework which makes use of the mind's own mechanisms. He doesn't have to look for high suggestibility people, because he is able to inject himself into the mechanisms of their own mind. Cool stuff.

TL;DR Power of suggestion is what it's all about. But we're all constantly bewildered by how powerful it is.