In a recent paper [9] we presented a Galerkin-type Conley index theory for certain classes of infinite-dimensional ODEs without the uniqueness property of the Cauchy problem. In this paper we show how to apply this theory to strongly indefinite elliptic systems. More specifically, we study the elliptic system $-\Delta u={\partial }_{v}H(u,v,x)$ in Ω, $-\Delta v={\partial }_{u}H(u,v,x)$ in Ω, u = 0, v = 0 in ∂Ω, (A1) on a smooth bounded domain Ω in ${ℝ}^N$ for "-"-type Hamiltonians H of class C² satisfying subcritical growth assumptions on their first order derivatives....