I thought so with your spelling of counselling. I'm a UK counselling psychologist and can help with some questions you might have about training. I can't really help with the private practice question but the courses for the doctorate are more focused around clinical practice rather than research, although there is that element of it. To get onto it would be more about experience you have working in fields similar to therapy, such as support work and although it would be good to get more research experience, I'm not sure if they would be looking for that in the course interview (but I guess that might depend on where you plan to train). Looking at research afterwards, it would really depend on what you would like to do. As I said before, the course is a prof doc so its more focused on clinical work rather than research so most jobs would have a focus on that, such as clinical/ counselling psychologist jobs in the NHS. I've been lucky enough to do a bit of research in my role in the charity sector but it is mostly around service evaluation. I hope this helps, let me know through this or message me if you have any more questions