He could not refrain from giving way to his most conspicuous weakness: he had to write a book about it

From American Heroes: Profiles of Men and Women Who Shaped Early America by Edmund S. Morgan. Page 118.

In the Goodwin case in Boston, the accused was indeed a poor and old woman, and upon search she was found to have the proper dolls in her possession and confessed to her crime and made many dark references to the devil. She apparently believed that she actually had done the job. She was tried, found guilty, and executed, but she warned her executioners that the children’s afflictions would continue, for there were others who would finish what she had begun. The children heard about this and perhaps decided that it would be a shame to give up their notoriety when the witch herself had suggested that they would continue to be attacked. Or perhaps the power of suggestion was itself sufficient to produce the seizures that they had been suffering. At any rate the convulsions continued.

It was at this point that Cotton Mather stepped into the breach. He took the oldest girl into his family in order to see whether his own superior piety would not be able to defeat the devil. For a while the girl apparently enjoyed the prestige of living with the eminent minister, and her affliction continued for a few weeks. But living in the same house with Cotton Mather must have proved in itself something of a cross to bear, perhaps too high a price to pay for notoriety. Soon Mather was able to announce his triumph over the forces of darkness. And the girl, completely cured now, was able to escape the prayers of that pompous egotist.

Mather had actually done the colony a great service, for the girl, after the execution of the Irish woman, had named a number of other persons who she said were now tormenting her. Mather kept the names of these persons secret and fought the devil, as was his wont, single-handed. When he had won his victory, however, he could not refrain from giving way to his most conspicuous weakness: he had to write a book about it. Mather would frequently rush into print on much smaller provocation than this anyhow, and now he came out with a book entitled Memorable Providences, in which he gave a full account of the Goodwin case and of his own spectacular part in putting a stop to it. From this narrative he drew two important conclusions: first, that there definitely is such a thing as witchcraft, for he observed it in action on the victim under his care, and, second, that it can be defeated by the method that he followed with the Goodwin girl, which consisted mainly of isolating the victim and praying.

Isolating something we don't understand in order to shield ourselves from it. Sound familiar?