It's an interesting thought. I wonder if the nature of schizophrenia isn't particularly conducive (almost binarily so) to being "driven" by visual signals.
In my interactions with schizophrenic people (especially when untreated), I've witnessed intense and unusual attention (some would say obsession) devoted to "patterns" — I've no other word to describe it generally; to paraphrase it: "order or regularity in visual, typically geometric or symbolic sequences of objects", a particular fascination for certain shapes or symbols.
Somehow, at some point in the processing, said patterns acquire additional meaning, what I'd call uncanny connections. (Schizophrenic people deeply believe that they see how to "connect the dots" — hence a particular tendency for tinfoil hatism and other paranoid world views.)
It also seems to work with music and other sensory inputs, though, but as you said, it could be that the visual is beyond some threshold, or of a particular nature so as to be able to trigger the schizophrenic patterns.
There's also this history of violence with the onset of schizophrenia, it seems to be an acquired condition notably highly correlated with childhood suffering (of abnormal magnitude and length), but with possibly typical genetic or epigenetic predispositions. This tells us again to search for a trigger, and it's interesting that people born blind never seem to experience such a triggering, the onset of schizophrenia, ever.
But people born blind are also different in many other ways, biologically — notably circadian rythms, etc. I should know because although I'm perfectly able to see I experience a few but too many of the same kind of second- and third-order conditions that blind people have, and that led me to suspect it was related to a deficiency of mine in regions of the brain related to the processing of light in relation to time (cycles of melatonin, hunger, etc; iirc it's generally involving the thalamus).
I don't really know what conclusion to make of all this, but I feel these are clues, help narrow or focus the solution space.
I am able to relate to your comment about patterns. I have had two episodes of anxiety attacks. I had visual hallucinations that kept repeating and wouldn’t stop. It was absolutely horrible. When the anxiety attacks used to happen I would stare at the wall for long durations. The wall had bricks in brown and white. I did not like that there was no symmetry. I kept repeating over and over that the wall lacked symmetry. I also experienced myself and my thinking self as two different entities and it as if I could watch myself as another person.
Until I experienced, I did know that such a thing existed. After the panic attack I searched about and found an entire Wikipedia article describing it.
To your question, I think third person view is like an intellectual activity that one undertake voluntarily. However what I experienced was very real feelings of separation and not an intellectual role play.
I think we all dissociate, like it's a spectrum; the weakest most minute manifestation is when we just 'take a step outside of our current state' you know, when you stretch just a bit to be/think/do slightly different. Experiment. Mimicry. We temporarily sever/disable a few 'links' inside and let new connections form, just to see.
It's also how I picture resisting empathy, all these times when we shut down feelings almost automatically — some of it is mundane 'keep a straight face', some of it is deeply atrocious like awful news or misery right in front of you. We have these "mirror neurons" that automatically replicate emotions of those we see¹; and unless we shut it down or temper it, we are bound to feel that very thing too. I think we kinda "dissociate" mildly from these mirrored feelings whenever we must, it's automatic by now (social species must do that to evolve beyond primal emotions it would seem).
But sometimes dissociation gets out of hand, cranked up to 11, and it operates versus parts of your own self, it shuts down entire regions of our inner world, and what's left to see is a weird, paradoxical state, that which psychology and the DSM see and would rightfully call pathological etc.
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[1]: That got me thinking, maybe it's one thing people born blind can't do: "see" the emotions of others and trigger mirror neurons in that way. Maybe there's something in this, in the unsufferable realization that you may see but never really know what's inside others, that drives schizophrenic people so obsessed whereas blind people, obviously, can never experience such a feeling. It certainly converts to other senses (voice conveys so much emotion for instance), but hypothetically very differently. I don't know. Thinking out loud here.
In my interactions with schizophrenic people (especially when untreated), I've witnessed intense and unusual attention (some would say obsession) devoted to "patterns" — I've no other word to describe it generally; to paraphrase it: "order or regularity in visual, typically geometric or symbolic sequences of objects", a particular fascination for certain shapes or symbols.
Somehow, at some point in the processing, said patterns acquire additional meaning, what I'd call uncanny connections. (Schizophrenic people deeply believe that they see how to "connect the dots" — hence a particular tendency for tinfoil hatism and other paranoid world views.)
It also seems to work with music and other sensory inputs, though, but as you said, it could be that the visual is beyond some threshold, or of a particular nature so as to be able to trigger the schizophrenic patterns.
There's also this history of violence with the onset of schizophrenia, it seems to be an acquired condition notably highly correlated with childhood suffering (of abnormal magnitude and length), but with possibly typical genetic or epigenetic predispositions. This tells us again to search for a trigger, and it's interesting that people born blind never seem to experience such a triggering, the onset of schizophrenia, ever.
But people born blind are also different in many other ways, biologically — notably circadian rythms, etc. I should know because although I'm perfectly able to see I experience a few but too many of the same kind of second- and third-order conditions that blind people have, and that led me to suspect it was related to a deficiency of mine in regions of the brain related to the processing of light in relation to time (cycles of melatonin, hunger, etc; iirc it's generally involving the thalamus).
I don't really know what conclusion to make of all this, but I feel these are clues, help narrow or focus the solution space.