The Dream and the Underworld is one of my favorite books on dreams. Hillman points out, the people you see in dreams who you recognize as friends or relatives are not representations of those people nor are they even aspects of yourself. They are archetypal, and for the dream to work its affect they must remain in the "underworld" and not be brought up into a recognizable "dayworld" position. Here’s a quote from Hillman:
"We associate my dream-brother and dream-father to my day-brother and day-father and, by this association, return the dream to the day. Jung’s method of interpretation on the subjective level takes the dream persons into the subject of the dreamer. They become expressions of my psychic traits. They are introjected into my personality. In neither method do we ever truly leave the personal aspect of the dream persons, and thus they remain in the upperworld. Dare I say it loud and clear? The persons I engage with in dreams are neither representations (simulacra) of their living selves nor parts of myself. They are shadow images that fill archetypal roles; they are personae, masks, in the hollow of which is numen." James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld
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