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I was interested in the idea that Hawthorne wrote to "exorcise demons," that is, to get a troubling thought out of his head. Hawthorne says at the end of The Scarlet Letter that he "would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain; where long meditation has fixed it in very undesireable distinctness." "It" refers to "the portent" on Dimmesdale's chest, aka the Scarlet Letter.

This to me is the most convincing argument that The Scarlet Letter is autobiographical (I agree that "autobiographical" is more accurate than "autobiography"). Hawthorne is drawing an obvious connection between himself and Dimmesdale here: like Dimmesdale, he has "meditated" on The Scarlet Letter even though he wants to forget it. If you choose to believe that Dimmesdale self-inflicted the A on his body, then Hawthorne did much the same kind of penance by writing the book, if he just wants not to think about it, as he says. But they both had to do it in order for the scarlet letter (The Scarlet Letter) to be revealed to the world and their "sin" to be absolved. I don't know what Hawthorne considered his sin (Prof Dalke mentioned some relationship with his sister?), but it seems clear that he struggled with guilt. He must have to have written a novel completely structured around it.

Did writing help him put his guilt to rest? I doubt it, since the autobiographical elements are not really obvious, and as a whole I think it was received more like Dimmesdale's self-condemning sermons in church than his final stand with Hester on the scaffold.  And, as the book argues, the only way to be (relatively) at peace with yourself is to make your sin explicitly known to the world.