CapriUni - you might want to look into the history of mental illness for the backstory to some of these disability 'fantasies' in literature. Genuine mental illness has a peculiar history of manifesting in 'socially acceptable' ways depending on the period - so where 'hysterical paralysis' or 'hysterical blindness' for example would have been more commonplace in years gone by, it now is almost non existent. By way of contrast, we now have a lot of food related behavioural problems (and related dysmorphias) such as anorexia and bullimia, which in years past was as unknown as hysterical paralysis is now.