USNews cover story on the unconscious
According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5% of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior depends on the 95% of brain activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness (a change from the earlier 10% estimate).
Gerald Zaltman, an emeritus professor at Harvard Business School and co-founder of Olson Zaltman Associates business consulting firm, came up with "a technique for eliciting interconnected constructs that influence thought and behavior." U.S. Patent No. 5,436,830, the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) uses research groups in which participants cut out pictures that represent their thoughts and feelings about a particular subject, even if they can’t explain why. The researchers then deduce the subject’s "core, a deep metaphor simultaneously embedded in a unique setting." Some are drawn to seasonal or heroic myths, or images like blood and fire and mother. Others to deep concepts like journey and transformation. Still it seems that the menu of these unconscious metaphors is limited and universal.
Research has shown that many people with schizophrenia can also suffer from "clinically meaningful olfactory impairment," which includes dysfunction in higher brain centers such as the parietal lobes–the part of the brain that’s responsible for integrating sensory output so as to understand something, like reading social cues or contextualizing those cues. Schizophrenics are unable to manage social relationships or summon a social context for whatever encounter they are experiencing.
Also, research on minimally conscious patients shows that there is significant activity in the language centers of the brain when they hear personal stories recounted by a family member.
Mysteries of the Mind, USNews.